Mainframe Senior Architect - Performance & Capacity Management

highmarkhealth; Pennsylvania; Hybrid; USD 120,000 - 160,000; Full time

Job summary

Highmark is seeking a Mainframe Senior Architect to lead performance and capacity management for its IBM enterprise mainframe environment. You will monitor resources, forecast infrastructure needs, and optimize costs in a Parallel Sysplex setting, leveraging RMF/SMF/WLM tools and expertise in z/OS, CICS, MQ, Db2, IMS, and related subsystems.

The role requires deep hands-on skills (REXX, JCL) and strong Excel/PowerPoint proficiency, with collaboration across DevOps and executive teams to ensure

Qualifications

• 10+ years of mainframe systems experience in large, multi-LPAR, Parallel Sysplex z/OS environments.
• Expertise in real-time mainframe performance monitoring and capacity management.
• Deep experience with RMF, SMF, WLM, and other mainframe performance tools.
• Strong hands-on skills in REXX and JCL.
• Advanced proficiency in Microsoft Excel and PowerPoint.

Responsibilities

• Take a lead role to provide strategic consultation to business customers in defining or designing more complex business processes, functions and organizational structures, as well as in researching, identifying and internally marketing enabling technologies based on customer capability requirements.
• Facilitate development of more complex enterprise business solutions that combine knowledge of particular business processes and issues, general technological options, and process facilitation techniques.
• Participate in more complex enterprise strategy development, including environmental analysis, opportunity identification, value cases and business innovation portfolio development.
• Take a lead role to specify and design large or more complex systems, solutions, networks, infrastructure elements, or processes.
• Review others' system design to ensure selection of appropriate technology, efficient use of resources and integration of multiple systems and technology.
• Establish policy for selection of more complex architecture component

Skills

Mainframe experience

Real-time monitoring

RMF/SMF/WLM

REXX & JCL

Excel & PowerPoint

Sysplex z/OS

Tools

RMF

SMF

WLM

Omegamon

SAS/MXG

Job description

enGen Job Description :

JOB SUMMARY

CANDIDATE MUST BE US Citizen (due to contractual/access requirements)

Highmark is seeking a highly motivated Mainframe Senior Architect to join the Mainframe Platform Services team . This role is accountable for the performance and capacity management of Highmark's IBM enterprise mainframe environment , ensuring optimal system efficiency, scalability, and cost-effectiveness . The position requires deep technical expertise across core mainframe technologies , including z/OS, Db2, IMS, CICS, MQ , and related subsystems. Responsibilities include proactively monitoring system resource utilization (CPU, memory, storage), analyzing workload trends, and forecasting future infrastructure requirements to prevent performance bottlenecks and support business growth. This role operates within a Parallel Sysplex environment , balancing system performance with financial efficiency. A strong understanding of IBM mainframe pricing models, including MSUs and MIPS , is essential to support effective cost optimization while maintaining high service levels.

Day to day job responsibilities include:

• Capacity Forecasting & Planning: Performing detailed trend analysis, usage modeling, and predicting hardware or MIPS growth based on business cycles to ensure infrastructure readiness.
• Performance Tuning & Optimization: Proactively tuning applications, middleware (CICS, Db2), and Workload Manager (WLM) policies to optimize enterprise hardware and software, ensuring low latency during peak workloads.
• Data Analysis & Reporting: Leveraging tools like RMF, SMF, SAS/MXG, and Omegamon to interpret and extract key performance metrics, and creating executive dashboards and operational reports.
• Billing & Cost Optimization: Managing IBM mainframe pricing models, including MSUs and MIPS, through Sub-Capacity Reporting Tool (SCRT) processing and aligning infrastructure capacity with financial constraints.
• Cross-functional Collaboration: Communicating technical findings and collaborating effectively with application, database, and DevOps teams, as well as executive leadership.
• Proactive Problem Solving: Designing preventative strategies and providing root-cause diagnostic capabilities to resolve real-time performance bottlenecks during critical high-volume business windows.

What You Bring:

• 10+ years of mainframe systems experience in large, multi-LPAR, Parallel Sysplex z/OS environments.
• Expertise in real-time mainframe performance monitoring and capacity management.
• Deep experience with RMF, SMF, WLM, and other mainframe performance tools.
• Strong hands-on skills in REXX and JCL.
• Advanced proficiency in Microsoft Excel and PowerPoint.
• Proven ability to troubleshoot and optimize mainframe workloads in real time.
• Mastery of IBM z/OS and IBM Z hardware architecture, logical partition (PR/SM) configuration, and Sysplex clustering.
• Advanced tuning of Workload Manager (WLM) policies, general processors, and zIIP (IBM z Integrated Information Processor) configurations.
• Ability to read, interpret, and extract metrics from SMF (System Management Facility) and RMF (Resource Measurement Facility) data records.
• In-depth knowledge of how major workloads like DB2, CICS, IMS, and MQ consume system resources and impact transaction response times.

Nice-to-Haves:

• Experience with ZPCR, Macro4 Freezeframe, BMC Thruput Manager, TADz, and IntelliMagic.
• Experience working with highly transactional, large-scale data systems.
• Ability to create executive dashboards and operational reporting tools.
• Ability to code SAS for generating reports.
• Proficiency in reporting and data modeling languages/tools such as SAS/MXG, Microsoft Excel, REXX, or specialized tools like IntelliMagic and OMEGAMON. (This is partially redundant with 'Must-haves' but adds a broader toolset emphasis).

ESSENTIAL RESPONSIBILITIES

Take a lead role to provide strategic consultation to business customers in defining or designing more complex business processes, functions and organizational structures, as well as in researching, identifying and internally marketing enabling technologies based on customer capability requirements. Facilitate development of more complex enterprise business solutions that combine knowledge of particular business processes and issues, general technological options, and process facilitation techniques. Participate in more complex enterprise strategy development, including environmental analysis, opportunity identification, value cases and business innovation portfolio development.

Take a lead role to specify and design large or more complex systems, solutions, networks, infrastructure elements, or processes. Select appropriate design standards, methods and tools and ensure that they are applied effectively. Review others' system design to ensure selection of appropriate technology, efficient use of resources and integration of multiple systems and technology. Establish policy for selection of more complex architecture component