AIX Principal Engineer

JOB DESCRIPTION

AIX Principal Engineer

Location: Remote

Duration: 12+ months contract

Work Expectations

• Participate in weekend on-call support as required for urgent escalations and critical production issues.
• Remain flexible to work any shift, including day, evening, night, or rotational shifts, according to business and client requirements.
• Take ownership of critical technical escalations through resolution and communicate progress clearly to clients and management.
• Experience :15+ years is a suggested target for this principal-level position.

Position Overview

We are seeking an experienced AIX Principal Engineer to lead the design, implementation, administration, optimization, and support of enterprise-scale IBM AIX/UNIX environments. The ideal candidate will bring strong hands-on expertise in IBM Power Systems, AIX administration, PowerHA/HACMP, Virtual I/O Server (VIOS), LPAR/DLPAR, PowerVM virtualization, storage, disaster recovery, and high-availability solutions. This role combines deep technical expertise with project management, team leadership, client communication, and ownership of critical escalations in mission-critical infrastructure environments.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead the architecture, implementation, administration, and support of IBM AIX/UNIX environments across enterprise datacenters and cloud platforms.
• Design, configure, and manage IBM Power Systems, including PowerVM, LPAR/DLPAR, VIOS, NPIV, virtual SCSI, and Live Partition Mobility (LPM).
• Implement, administer, and troubleshoot high-availability and disaster recovery solutions using PowerHA/HACMP.
• Manage AIX installation, configuration, upgrades, patching, firmware updates, performance tuning, capacity planning, and troubleshooting.
• Lead datacenter consolidation, server migration, and infrastructure modernization initiatives, including on-premises-to-cloud migrations.
• Configure and manage enterprise storage solutions, including SAN, zoning, masking, multipathing, replication, backup, and recovery.
• Manage enterprise virtualization environments using IBM PowerVC, HMC, VMware vSphere, and related technologies.
• Implement security hardening, vulnerability remediation, access controls, audit requirements, and controlled change-management procedures.
• Troubleshoot complex system, network, storage, and performance issues in mission-critical production environments and lead root cause analysis.
• Develop and maintain automation scripts using Shell, Bash, Python, or other relevant scripting languages.
• Collaborate with application, database, middleware, network, security, storage, and infrastructure teams to deliver reliable enterprise solutions.
• Lead infrastructure projects from initiation through completion, including planning, timelines, resource coordination, risk management, status reporting, and delivery.
• Lead, mentor, and coordinate technical teams; assign responsibilities, monitor progress, support knowledge sharing, and ensure timely completion of project deliverables.
• Communicate directly with clients, stakeholders, and senior management regarding project status, technical issues, risks, incident impact, and resolution plans.
• Serve as the final technical escalation point for critical AIX/UNIX infrastructure issues, major production incidents, and complex system failures; drive resolution and keep stakeholders informed.
• Coordinate cross-functional teams during critical incidents to minimize business impact and restore services within agreed timelines.
• Prepare and maintain architecture documents, operational procedures, project plans, incident reports, root cause analyses, and knowledge-transfer materials.
• Provide on-call support during weekends when urgent escalations, critical incidents, or production issues occur.
• Be flexible and comfortable working in any shift, including day, evening, night, or rotational shifts, based on business requirements.

Required Technical Skills

• Extensive experience in IBM AIX administration, preferably AIX 6.x and 7.x.
• Strong knowledge of IBM Power Systems and PowerVM virtualization.
• Hands-on experience with LPAR/DLPAR, VIOS, NPIV, virtual SCSI, and Live Partition Mobility.
• Expertise in PowerHA/HACMP configuration, administration, and troubleshooting.
• Strong knowledge of Linux/UNIX operating systems and enterprise server administration.
• Experience with IBM PowerVC, Hardware Management Console (HMC), and IBM Power infrastructure.
• Knowledge of SAN storage, zoning, masking, replication, multipathing, backup, and disaster recovery.
• Experience with enterprise backup solutions such as IBM Spectrum Protect/TSM, Commvault, or Veritas NetBackup.
• Strong troubleshooting, performance tuning, capacity planning, and root cause analysis skills.
• Experience with Shell scripting, Bash, or Python automation.
• Knowledge of TCP/IP, DNS, NFS, SAN, and enterprise networking fundamentals.
• Experience with security hardening, vulnerability remediation, monitoring, audit compliance, incident management, and change management.
• Strong project coordination, team leadership, client communication, documentation, and stakeholder-management skills.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with large-scale enterprise datacenter environments and infrastructure consolidation.
• Exposure to IBM Cloud, AWS, or Azure infrastructure and migration projects.
• Experience with VMware ESXi and vCenter.
• Knowledge of enterprise monitoring tools such as Splunk, Zabbix, IBM Cloud Monitoring, or Xymon.
• Familiarity with ITIL processes and tools such as ServiceNow.
• Relevant IBM AIX, Power Systems, cloud, or infrastructure certifications.
• Experience supporting mission-critical banking, financial services, healthcare, or government environments.

Education

Bachelor s degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.