IBM MQ Administrator - z/OS (Mainframe)

IBM MQ Administrator - z/OS (Mainframe)

DURATION: 6 months (extension - very likely
LOCATION: Edinburgh, Leeds or Manchester
WORKING HOURS: Standard business hours with out of hours support required
ONSITE REQUIREMENTS: Hybrid - 2 days onsite per week
ENGAGEMENT TYPE: Contract - Outside IR35
DAY RATE: £550 per day

LEGAL RIGHT TO WORK: Candidates must have the legal right to work in the UK. Sponsorship is not available for this role.

ATRIUM GLOBAL SUMMARY
Atrium Global is supporting a client within the financial services sector who is seeking a highly experienced IBM MQ z/OS Administrator to join a specialist Mainframe Middleware team.

JOB OVERVIEW
This role sits within a Mainframe-only environment and requires a contractor who can contribute immediately with minimal ramp-up. You will provide hands-on support and delivery across a critical IBM MQ estate on z/OS, focusing on production stability, incident resolution and controlled change delivery.

This is a pure z/OS MQ role - candidates with primarily distributed MQ or broader platform backgrounds will not be suitable.

RESPONSIBILITIES
Provide hands-on administration of IBM MQ on z/OS across production environments
Deliver incident, problem and change resolution within strict SLAs
Support and maintain MQ queue managers, channels and configurations
Perform production deployments, upgrades and migrations
Troubleshoot complex MQ issues across mission-critical systems
Maintain service stability, resilience and performance optimisation
Work closely with stakeholders across Mainframe and infrastructure teams
Ensure adherence to governance, processes and security standards
Participate in out of hours support and deployment activities

REQUIREMENTS
* Strong hands-on experience administering IBM MQ on z/OS (v9.x preferred)
* Proven experience working in Mainframe-only MQ environments
* Deep understanding of:
- Queue managers
- Channels
- MQ objects
- Clustering/Queue Sharing Groups (QSG)
* Experience with TLS/SSL configuration and MQ security (RACF)
* Strong troubleshooting skills within production MQ environments
* Experience delivering changes independently into production
* Familiarity with z/OS panels, ISPF and Mainframe tooling
* Experience working within ITIL-controlled environments

NICE TO HAVE
* Experience with MQ monitoring tools on z/OS (eg Omegamon)
* Experience within UK banking or financial services environments
* Experience supporting high-volume payments or core banking systems