POSITION SUMMARY :

The L1/L2 Middleware Support Engineer is a front-line operations role responsible for monitoring, triaging, and resolving incidents across a complex enterprise middleware ecosystem on a 247365 basis. The engineer ensures service availability and performance continuity for IBM WebSphere Application Server, IBM MQ, IBM API Connect, IBM DataPower Gateway, IBM Event Streams, Oracle WebLogic, Oracle Service Bus, and containerized middleware workloads running on OpenShift.

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES :

Incident Management & Monitoring :

- Monitor middleware platform health via APM/ITSM tools (DataDog, Dynatrace, Splunk, IBM Tivoli, or equivalent)

- Acknowledge, triage, and classify incidents per SLA priorities (P1P4)

- Perform first-level troubleshooting and apply known fixes using runbooks and knowledge base articles

- Escalate unresolved incidents to L3 architects with complete diagnostic artifacts (logs, thread dumps, heap dumps, MQ channel states)

- Execute scheduled maintenance tasks : restarts, deployments, patching activities under change management windows

IBM WebSphere Application Server (WAS) :

- Monitor JVM health, thread pools, JDBC connections, and transaction timeouts

- Restart application servers, node agents, and deployment managers as per escalation procedures

- Deploy EAR/WAR application artifacts via Integrated Solutions Console (ISC) or wsadmin scripting

- Collect JVM heap dumps, thread dumps using javacore/heapcore diagnostics and IBM Support Assistant

- Review SystemOut.log, SystemErr.log, and FFDCs for error pattern identification

IBM MQ :

- Monitor queue depths, channel status, listener availability, and dead-letter queues (DLQ)

- Restart stopped channels; clear inhibited queues under approved procedures

- Use MQ Explorer, runmqsc, and dspmq commands for diagnostics

- Purge DLQ messages and replay messages using approved tools per change control

- Monitor MQ cluster health and report replication/synchronization anomalies

IBM API Connect & DataPower :

- Monitor API gateway health, API call volumes, error rates, and latency dashboards

- Identify and escalate API policy failures, backend connectivity issues, and TLS certificate warnings

- Perform DataPower service restarts and domain health checks using the XML Management Interface or WebGUI

- Review DataPower probe logs and troubleshoot XML/JSON transformation errors

IBM Event Streams (Kafka) :

- Monitor broker health, consumer group lag, topic partition status, and replication factors

- Identify stalled consumers and dead consumers; escalate with lag metrics

- Restart Kafka brokers/ZooKeeper nodes per runbook under change management

Oracle WebLogic & Service Bus :

- Monitor WebLogic Administration Console for server state, JDBC pool utilization, and JMS queue depths

- Restart Managed Servers and Node Managers per escalation procedures

- Monitor Oracle Service Bus (OSB) proxy services, business services, and alert rules

- Review server logs, garbage collection logs, and JVM diagnostics via WLST or console

OpenShift / Container Operations :

- Monitor pod health, deployment rollout status, and resource utilization (CPU/Memory) using OCP console or kubectl/oc CLI

- Restart failing pods; report CrashLoopBackOff, ImagePullBackOff, and OOMKilled events to L3

- Collect pod logs and events using oc logs and oc describe for escalation

- Support containerized middleware (WAS Liberty, MQ on OpenShift, DataPower Gateway operator) day-2 operations

Process & Documentation :

- Maintain shift handover logs and incident status updates in ITSM tools (ServiceNow, Jira, Remedy)

- Create and update runbooks, knowledge base articles, and post-incident reports for recurring issues

- Participate in daily stand-ups, shift briefings, and weekly service review calls

- Adhere to ITIL-based incident, change, and problem management processes

REQUIRED QUALIFICATIONS :

Education & Experience :

- Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, or equivalent technical discipline (or equivalent work experience)

- 3 to 5 years of experience in middleware or application support roles with hands-on middleware administration and incident management experience

- Experience operating in a 247 NOC, SOC, or managed services environment preferred

Technical Skills :

- Proficiency with at least 2 of the core technologies : IBM WAS, IBM MQ, IBM API Connect, IBM DataPower, IBM Event Streams, Oracle WebLogic, Oracle Service Bus

- Basic Linux/Unix command-line proficiency (file system navigation, log analysis, process management)

- Familiarity with containerization concepts (Docker, Kubernetes/OpenShift)

- Understanding of TCP/IP networking, SSL/TLS, HTTP/HTTPS protocols relevant to middleware

- Experience with ITSM tooling : ServiceNow, BMC Remedy, or Jira Service Management

- Ability to read and interpret Java stack traces, thread dumps, and application logs

PREFERRED CERTIFICATIONS :

- IBM Certified System Administrator WebSphere Application Server

- IBM Certified MQ Administrator

- Oracle WebLogic Server 12c Administration

- Red Hat Certified OpenShift Administrator (EX280) or equivalent

- ITIL 4 Foundation

- IBM Cloud Pak for Integration training/certification