Senior Associate - Mainframe Operations Engineer

Be a key engineering owner for New York Life’s mainframe production environment, with a focus on JES2, IDMS, Db2, and ESP workload scheduling. You’ll keep critical batch and online workloads running reliably, tune performance, engineer automation, and drive standards for change, monitoring, and incident response. 

You’ll work closely with application teams, DBAs, infrastructure, and SRE/observability partners to ensure our mainframe services are stable, performant, secure, and audit-ready. 

What You’ll Do 

Run & Support Mainframe Operations 

• Operate and support JES2 on z/OS, ensuring reliable spool management, initiator configuration, and job throughput. 

• Monitor and support IDMS and Db2 subsystems (online and batch), resolving issues impacting availability and performance. 

• Support related mainframe components such as CICS regions, MQ managers, VTAM, TCP/IP stacks, and VSAM datasets as they impact workloads. 

• Handle day-to-day operations: startup/shutdown procedures, IPL support, system maintenance windows, and health checks. 

Batch, ESP Scheduling & Online Workload Management 

• Configure, maintain, and troubleshoot ESP (or equivalent CA/Broadcom scheduler) workloads, calendars, events, and dependencies. 

• Support scheduling and execution of batch workloads that depend on JES2, IDMS, Db2, and ESP, including coordination with enterprise scheduling and workload automation teams. 

• Troubleshoot failing jobs (JCL, ESP definitions, utilities, data issues) and work with app teams to implement permanent fixes. 

• Optimize batch windows, parallelism, and resource usage to meet SLA and cutoff times. 

Performance, Capacity & Tuning 

• Analyze JES2, IDMS, Db2, ESP, and related subsystem metrics/logs to identify bottlenecks and tuning opportunities. 

• Work with system programmers and DBAs to adjust parameters, buffer pools, access paths, storage allocations, and ESP schedules. 

• Participate in capacity planning for CPU, memory, channels, and storage based on business growth and new workloads. 

Reliability, Resilience & Change Management 

• Implement and maintain standard restart/rerun patterns for mainframe jobs and transactions (e.g., step restarts, checkpoint/restart, idempotent designs). 

• Support DR exercises and failover testing for mainframe systems, ensuring IDMS and Db2 participate effectively in recovery scenarios. 

• Align all changes with change management and release processes, including risk assessments and back-out plans. 

Monitoring, Observability & Automation 

• Integrate JES2, IDMS, Db2, and ESP with monitoring and logging tools; build dashboards and alerts for health and SLA tracking. 

• Tune alert thresholds to reduce noise while catching genuine issues early. 

• Develop automation (REXX, CLISTs, JCL procedures, OPS/MVS or equivalent) to reduce manual steps and handle common operational tasks and ESP actions. 

Incident Response & Problem Management 

• Serve as SME during incidents impacting mainframe workloads; quickly triage, diagnose, and restore service for JES2/IDMS/Db2/ESP issues. 

• Provide detailed technical input to post-incident reviews and drive root-cause fixes into procedures, configurations, ESP definitions, or application code. 

• Maintain runbooks and knowledge articles for JES2, IDMS, Db2, and ESP operations. 

Collaboration & Standards 

• Partner with application teams, DBAs, system programmers, security, and auditors to keep mainframe environments secure and compliant. 

• Contribute to standards for JCL, ESP job/event definitions, utilities, logging, and error handling across mainframe applications. 

• Mentor junior engineers and share best practices on mainframe operations, ESP scheduling, and troubleshooting. 

Qualifications 

• 5–10+ years of hands-on experience supporting z/OS mainframe operations in a production environment. 

• Strong experience with: 

• JES2 operations (initiation, spool management, routing, class setup, tuning). 

• ESP Workload Automation (or equivalent enterprise scheduler): events, calendars, schedules, resources, and job dependencies. 

• IDMS operations and support (central version, subschema/database operations, performance monitoring, recovery). 

• IBM Db2 for z/OS (monitoring, utilities, basic tuning, backup/recovery coordination). 

• Solid skills in JCL and common mainframe utilities (SORT, IEBGENER, IDCAMS, IEBCOPY, etc.). 

• Experience with mainframe tooling such as SDSF, ISPF, OMEGAMON, OPS/MVS, or equivalent monitoring/automation products. 

• Strong troubleshooting skills across batch and online workloads, including interpreting dumps, SYSLOG, and subsystem logs. 

• Familiarity with incident, change, and problem management processes (e.g., ITIL-aligned) in large enterprise environments. 

• Clear, concise communication skills and ability to work effectively with application teams, DBAs, schedulers, and infrastructure engineers. 

Nice to Have 

• Experience in financial services or other highly regulated industries. 

• Additional mainframe skill sets such as: 

• CICS or other transaction monitors. 

• IBM MQ on z/OS. 

• RACF or equivalent for security and access control. 

• Integration of mainframe logs/metrics with enterprise observability platforms. 

• Knowledge of security and compliance requirements related to mainframe (access controls, audit logging, data protection). 

• Relevant certifications in mainframe, database, or ITIL/operations disciplines. 

How Success Will Be Measured 

• High availability and stability of JES2, IDMS, Db2, and ESP scheduling environments. 

• SLA adherence for critical batch windows and online services. 

• Reduction in repeat incidents and improved MTTR for mainframe-related issues. 

• Decrease in manual interventions through automation and improved runbooks and ESP patterns. 

• Positive feedback from app teams, DBAs, schedulers, and auditors on reliability, documentation, and collaboration. 

Working Model 

Hybrid role based in New York, NY, with regular on-site collaboration for planning, release events, and key change windows. Participation in an on-call rotation for critical mainframe periods (month-end, quarter-end, year-end, and major releases) is expected.