Lead IBM i (AS/400) Infrastructure Design Engineer

About the Role

We are seeking an experienced IBM i Infrastructure Design Engineer to join our Infrastructure Engineering team. This role is responsible for the architecture, engineering, governance and highest-level technical support (L3/L3.5) of the organisation's IBM i (AS/400) platforms and associated IBM storage infrastructure.

The successful candidate will be a senior technical authority for IBM Power Systems, IBM i operating environments, high availability, backup, disaster recovery and storage platforms. The role combines deep IBM i expertise with broad infrastructure engineering knowledge and a strong focus on service reliability, automation, security and operational excellence.

The engineer will provide design leadership for the IBM i estate whilst acting as the senior escalation point for complex platform, operating system, storage and performance-related issues.

Key Responsibilities

• Design, implement and maintain enterprise IBM Power and IBM i infrastructure services.
• Own the architecture, standards and governance of the IBM i platform.
• Act as the L3/L3.5 escalation point for complex IBM i, Power Systems and storage-related incidents.
• Design and support high availability, replication, backup and disaster recovery solutions.
• Manage operating system upgrades, platform lifecycle management and infrastructure modernisation initiatives.
• Provide technical leadership for performance tuning, capacity planning and resilience improvements.
• Support and govern IBM storage systems used by the IBM i estate.
• Develop and maintain platform documentation, standards and operational processes.
• Collaborate with infrastructure, security, network, application and database teams to deliver stable and secure services.
• Develop and implement automation to simplify administration and operational activities.
• Support audit, compliance and security initiatives across the IBM i environment.
• Contribute to infrastructure transformation, datacentre and cloud integration programmes.

Essential Skillsets & Experience

• Extensive experience administering and engineering IBM i (AS/400) environments.
• Strong knowledge of IBM Power Systems architecture and administration.
• Experience managing IBM i operating system upgrades, maintenance and lifecycle activities.
• Strong understanding of:
  • LPAR design and management
  • Virtual I/O Server (VIOS)
  • HMC administration
  • Performance management and tuning
  • Job scheduling and workload management
  • Backup and recovery services
  • High availability and disaster recovery architectures
• Experience supporting business-critical IBM i applications and services.
• Strong troubleshooting and root-cause analysis skills across operating system, infrastructure and application layers.
• Experience supporting large-scale, highly available production environments.

IBM Storage Requirements

• Experience supporting IBM storage platforms used by IBM Power environments.
• Understanding of:
  • IBM FlashSystem
  • IBM Storwize
  • SAN infrastructure
  • Fibre Channel technologies
  • Multipathing
  • Storage provisioning and performance optimisation
  • Replication and disaster recovery technologies
• Ability to provide design guidance, operational support and troubleshooting for IBM storage infrastructure supporting IBM i workloads.
• Work with specialist storage engineering teams and vendors to optimise platform performance and resilience.

Desirable Experience

• PowerHA.
• MIMIX or equivalent IBM i replication technologies.
• BRMS.
• IBM AIX administration.
• IBM Spectrum Protect.
• SAN switch technologies.
• Automation using Ansible, Python or PowerShell.
• Monitoring solutions such as IBM Navigator, Grafana, SolarWinds or equivalent.
• Public cloud integration and hybrid infrastructure architectures.
• Experience applying AI-assisted operational tooling for monitoring, troubleshooting and knowledge management.

Key Attributes

• Deep technical expertise in IBM i and Power Systems technologies.
• Strong design and architecture capability.
• Excellent troubleshooting and diagnostic skills.
• Security and resilience focused.
• Strong documentation and governance discipline.
• Automation-first mindset.
• Ability to lead technical standards and engineering best practices.
• Strong communication and stakeholder engagement skills.

Success Measures

• Availability and resilience of IBM i services.
• Stability and performance of IBM Power infrastructure.
• Effective operation of backup, disaster recovery and high availability solutions.
• Security and compliance of IBM i platforms.
• Reduction in operational effort through automation and process improvement.
• Successful delivery of platform upgrades and infrastructure transformation initiatives.
• Quality of technical standards, documentation and operational governance.

This role provides an opportunity to own and modernise a critical IBM i platform estate, ensuring the continued delivery of secure, resilient and high-performing services while helping shape the future direction of IBM Power and storage infrastructure.

Why Join Us?

We're on a journey to become market leaders in our space, with incredible opportunities to collaborate and learn from industry experts across the globe. You will work with game-changing products and services, receive the training and support needed to try new things, and explore different career paths. We encourage and train every employee to use AI tools to boost creativity and productivity. Keyloop does not require academic qualifications for this position; candidates are selected based on experience and potential, not credentials. Keyloop is an equal opportunity employer committed to building a diverse and inclusive workforce.