IBM i Systems Admin

Job summary

Administer and maintain production and non-production IBM i environments, including operational monitoring, security, backups, recovery, upgrades, and customized RPG/CL and Db2 for i applications. Plan capacity and future architecture, support new functionality and migrations, and coordinate testing, change control, vendors, and business stakeholders.

Job details

Position Overview We are seeking an experienced IBM i professional to take ownership of the administration, reliability, maintenance, and technical evolution of our IBM Power environment supporting Epicor CMS 5.3. This is a hands-on role combining IBM i systems administration, RPG/CL and Db2 for i application support, upgrade planning, and infrastructure advisory responsibilities. The successful candidate will maintain day-to-day operations while helping us plan capacity growth, deliver new functionality, and evaluate future hosting and modernization options. Key responsibilities: IBM i administration and operational reliability Administer production and non-production IBM i environments. Perform daily health checks and monitor jobs, subsystems, queues, messages, storage utilization, and system performance. Manage backups, retention, recovery procedures, and scheduled restore testing. Investigate incidents, resolve operational problems, and document corrective actions. Maintain user profiles, object authorities, service accounts, and access controls. Maintain operating procedures, configuration records, and support documentation. Coordinate hardware, storage, operating-system, and vendor support activities. Updates, upgrades, and change management Develop and maintain an IBM i OS, PTF, and application-maintenance roadmap. Plan IBM i and Epicor CMS updates and upgrades in coordination with application vendors and business stakeholders. Assess compatibility, dependencies, downtime, licensing, and recovery requirements. Establish test environments, regression-test plans, deployment procedures, and rollback plans. Document and control production changes, source code, and configuration changes. Application support and customization maintenance Analyze, debug, modify, and maintain RPG, CL, DDS, and SQL-based components. Inventory and document existing application customizations, interfaces, reports, and batch processes. Assess how OS or ERP changes may affect customized components. Remediate, recompile, or adapt customizations as required following supported upgrade procedures. Validate critical business processes, integrations, reports, and data integrity before and after deployment. Work with Epicor or its support partners on vendor-controlled changes and escalations. Capacity, new functionality, and future architecture Assess resource utilization and forecast capacity requirements. Recommend practical options for additional processing, memory, storage, resilience, and performance. Translate new business requirements into technical designs and implementation plans. Evaluate on-premises, hosted IBM i, cloud, and hybrid options. Prepare migration approaches covering dependencies, security, cost, connectivity, cutover, testing, and recovery. Explain recommendations and trade-offs clearly to management. Required qualifications Demonstrated hands-on ownership of production IBM i environments. Strong backup, recovery, work-management, security, maintenance, and troubleshooting skills. Experience planning and executing IBM i upgrades and application changes. Strong RPG/ILE RPG, CL/CLLE, Db2 for i SQL, and legacy application troubleshooting skills. Experience maintaining customized enterprise applications through upgrades. Ability to design and execute regression testing and rollback procedures. Experience with capacity assessment, technical documentation, and vendor coordination. Clear communication skills and a disciplined approach to production changes. Preferred qualifications Epicor CMS experience, particularly CMS 5.3 or a relevant upgrade path. Manufacturing-system and integration support experience. POWER9/POWER10, HMC, LPAR, and storage administration. Disaster recovery, high availability, PowerHA, and recovery exercises. IBM i hosting or cloud-migration experience. Modern IBM i development tooling, source control, and controlled use of AI-assisted development tools

What you’ll do

Administer and maintain production and non-production IBM i environments, including operational monitoring, security, backups, recovery, upgrades, and customized RPG/CL and Db2 for i applications. Plan capacity and future architecture, support new functionality and migrations, and coordinate testing, change control, vendors, and business stakeholders.

Requirements

Requires hands-on ownership of production IBM i environments, strong administration and troubleshooting skills, and experience with IBM i upgrades, customized enterprise applications, and RPG/CL and Db2 for i SQL. Candidates should also be able to plan regression testing and rollback, assess capacity, document technical work, coordinate vendors, and communicate recommendations clearly.

Listed skills

• Vendor Coordination · Preferred

Other relevant skills

Identified from the job description. Confirm important requirements above.

• IBM i Systems Administration
• Backup and Recovery
• Work Management
• IBM i Security
• IBM i Upgrades
• RPG and ILE RPG
• CL and CLLE
• Db2 for i SQL
• Application Troubleshooting
• Regression Testing
• Capacity Planning
• Production Change Management
• Epicor CMS
• PowerHA and Disaster Recovery
• HMC and LPAR Administration
• Vendor Coordination

Job areas

• Technology
• Manufacturing
• Software