CICS, MQ & z​/OS Mainframe Systems Programmer

We are looking for an experienced CICS, MQ, and z/OS Systems Programmer on a permanent/contractor basis to support, enhance, and modernise our mission critical IBM Z environments. This role is central to the stability, performance, and resilience of our core transaction processing platforms. You will work across installation, configuration, performance engineering, incident resolution, and continuous improvement, ensuring our systems remain secure, compliant, and highly available.

This is a remote role and you can be located anywhere in the world.

• Install, upgrade, configure, and customise IBM CICS Transaction Server and IBM MQ across multiple z/OS environments.
• Design, implement, and maintain CICS intercommunication capabilities, including transaction routing, distributed program link (DPL), MRO, IPIC, and web enablement.
• Administer and optimise MQ queue managers, channels, queues, and associated security and recovery processes.
• Maintain and tune VSAM datasets, CICS exits, and supporting assembler routines.
• Conduct system testing including integration, regression, concurrency, and failover scenarios.
• Diagnose and resolve complex issues using IPCS, system traces, dumps, logs, and performance data.
• Perform root cause analysis (RCA) and deliver actionable recommendations to prevent recurrence.
• Lead or contribute to performance tuning, capacity planning, and workload optimisation initiatives.
• Support compliance, audit, and security requirements, including RACF and platform hardening.
• Produce clear technical documentation, operational procedures, and stakeholder reporting.
• Collaborate with application, infrastructure, and security teams to support change, release, and modernisation programmes.

• Solid handson experience with IBM CICS Transaction Server and IBM MQ in large scale z/OS environments.
• Strong understanding of CICS architecture, regions, RDO, CPSM/CICSPlex, and intercommunication facilities.
• Solid experience with MQ administration, including clustering, security, logging, and recovery.
• Good working knowledge of CTG (CICS Transaction Gateway) and its integration patterns.
• Strong z/OS systems programming background, including JCL, SMP/E, WLM, JES2, and subsystem integration.
• Proficiency with RACF and mainframe security concepts.
• Demonstrated capability in performance tuning, problem determination, and high severity incident resolution.
• Experience supporting modernisation initiatives, such as APIs, REST enablement, Zowe, Dev Ops tooling, or hybrid cloud integration.
• Ability to produce high quality documentation and communicate effectively with technical and nontechnical stakeholders.

• Experience with DB2, IMS, or MQ on distributed platforms.
• Familiarity with automation tools (OPS/MVS, System Automation, Control
  
  M, TWS).
• Exposure to observability tooling, SMF analytics, or performance monitoring suites.
• Knowledge of CICS web services, Liberty, or Java integration on z/OS.
• Participation in oncall or 24/7 support environments.