Mainframe IBM MQ Engineer - JKNC

Job Description Job Description Job Title: Mainframe IBM MQ Engineer Location: Chandler, AZ; Plano, TX; Charlotte, NC; Jersey City, NJ Job Type: Contract Duration: 6–12 Months Work Arrangement: Hybrid | 3 Days Onsite and 2 Days Work From Home Pay Rate: $55–$60/hr Note: This job doesn't offer any benefits. Position Overview We are seeking an experienced Mainframe IBM MQ Engineer with strong hands-on expertise in IBM MQ for z/OS to support highly available, business-critical mainframe environments. The role focuses on MQ administration, configuration, security, performance tuning, troubleshooting, and lifecycle management. Required Qualifications Strong hands-on experience with IBM MQ for z/OS. Strong knowledge of queue managers, local and remote queues, transmission queues, MQ channels, channel initiators, listeners, and dead-letter queues. Experience with distributed queuing, MQ clustering, MQ security, logging, recovery, monitoring, and troubleshooting. Strong working knowledge of IBM z/OS. Experience developing and maintaining JCL. Good understanding of TCP/IP and network connectivity. Experience troubleshooting MQ issues and supporting production environments. Experience supporting high-volume, business-critical mainframe systems. Understanding of change, incident, and problem management processes. Responsibilities IBM MQ Administration & Configuration Install, configure, administer, and support IBM MQ for z/OS environments. Create, configure, and maintain queue managers, local and remote queues, transmission queues, channels, listeners, and other MQ objects. Perform routine MQ administration, monitoring, maintenance, and operational support. Configure and maintain distributed queuing between queue managers. Administer and troubleshoot IBM MQ clusters and messaging infrastructure. Monitoring & Troubleshooting Monitor queue depths, channel status, queue manager availability, message flow, and overall infrastructure health. Troubleshoot channel failures, queue manager issues, message delivery problems, and messages remaining on queues. Resolve connectivity issues, security and authorization failures, and application-to-MQ communication problems. Perform problem determination and root cause analysis for production incidents. Support MQ recovery, restart, and service restoration activities. Security & Connectivity Implement and maintain MQ security in collaboration with security and RACF teams. Configure and troubleshoot channel authentication, connection authentication, TLS, and MQ access controls, where applicable. Support TCP/IP connectivity and secure communication between applications and queue managers. Maintain reliable MQ integration with mainframe applications and enterprise infrastructure. Performance, Maintenance & Resiliency Analyze MQ performance and implement tuning recommendations. Support MQ upgrades, migrations, patching, maintenance, and lifecycle management. Support high availability, disaster recovery, and business continuity requirements. Develop and maintain JCL, automation scripts, operational procedures, and technical documentation. Participate in production implementations, change management, incident management, and problem management. Provide on-call and after-hours support for critical production issues as required. Application & Infrastructure Integration Support IBM MQ integration with CICS and IMS applications. Collaborate with application, network, security, operations, and systems programming teams. Support MQ communication across complex enterprise mainframe environments. Ensure reliable messaging services for high-volume, business-critical applications. Preferred Technical Skills CICS and IBM MQ integration. IMS and IBM MQ integration. RACF security administration. TCP/IP networking. REXX scripting. TSO/ISPF. SDSF. SMP/E software maintenance. IBM Sysplex environments. MQ Queue Sharing Groups. Automation and monitoring tools. Enterprise scheduling tools such as CA7 or TWS. Disaster recovery and business continuity. Performance monitoring and capacity management. Managed File Transfer (MFT).