IBM Connect: Direct SME

Key responsibilities

Platform engineering & SME ownership

• Act as the technical SME for IBM Connect:Direct (CD) across build, run, and change.
• Lead installations, configurations, upgrades, patching, migrations, and platform enhancements .
• Maintain platform standards: configuration baselines, naming conventions, certificate/key management approach, and operational runbooks.
• Drive capacity planning, performance tuning, and resilience improvements.

Operations, incident/problem management

• Provide L2/L3 support for production issues: triage, root cause analysis, and permanent fixes.
• Troubleshoot end-to-end MFT flows including process definitions, scheduling, connectivity, authentication, encryption, and partner onboarding.
• Improve monitoring/alerting and reduce repeat incidents through automation and problem management.

Automation & DevOps enablement

• Build and maintain automation using Ansible, Jenkins, and GitHub (CI/CD for configuration, deployments, and repeatable changes).
• Develop and maintain Bash/Python scripts for operational tasks (log parsing, housekeeping, certificate checks, health checks, reporting).

Observability & performance

• Implement and enhance monitoring using Splunk (dashboards, alerts, correlation searches) and AppDynamics (application performance insights where relevant).
• Monitoring system healthiness (availability, transfer success rate, latency, queue depth, error rates).

Infrastructure, network & security collaboration

• Partner with network/infrastructure/security teams on firewall rules, routing, DNS, load balancers, TLS/certificates, vulnerability remediation, and access controls.
• Ensure secure configuration aligned to enterprise security expectations (encryption in transit/at rest, least privilege, audit logging).

Cross-platform support

• Provide support across Linux and Windows Server environments, including service/process management, troubleshooting, and patch coordination.

Required skills & experience

• ~8 years of hands-on experience in enterprise middleware / managed file transfer / platform engineering.
• Strong experience with IBM Connect:Direct:
  
  Installation, configuration, upgrades/patching, process configuration, troubleshooting, performance tuning.
• Strong Linux administration skills:
  
  Service/process management, file permissions, networking basics, log analysis, troubleshooting.
• Scripting skills in Bash and/or Python for automation and operational tooling.
• Experience with Ansible, Jenkins, and GitHub in a DevOps delivery model.
• Working knowledge of Splunk (search, dashboards, alerting) and AppDynamics (usage for diagnostics/monitoring).
• Solid understanding of networking and security concepts (TLS, certificates, ports, firewalls, authentication/authorisation).
• Experience supporting Windows Server environments.

Qualifications

• Bachelors degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or equivalent practical experience.
• Relevant IBM product certifications are a plus (Connect:Direct).