IBMi System Architect

Guild Mortgage Company , closing loans and opening doors since 1960. As a mortgage banking firm we are dedicated to serving the home owner/buyer. Our goal is to provide affordable home financing for our customers, utilizing the best terms available while providing a level of professionalism and service unsurpassed in the lending industry.

Position Summary

The IBMi System Architect plays an important role in the organization by performing activities directly related to the company's information technology posture. This role is primarily responsible, in collaboration with key IT leaders, for Improving and developing a comprehensive Disaster Recovery solution for the IBMi. The secondary role involves evaluating, architecting/designing, and guiding direction in Guild Mortgage's IBMi application ecosystem using the appropriate, time-based technologies
and following industry best practices. This involves database design and access, system configuration, and performance monitoring and solutioning. This role is expected to use a results-based and iterative approach based on the current Guild technology landscape and future growth.

Essential Functions
•  Work with Governance to develop, manage and test back-up and recovery plans on the IBMi.
•  Run regular test scenarios with the Disaster Recovery team to guarantee a successful recovery from identified disaster scenarios within a timeframe agreed to by the business.
•  Suggest methodologies, software, processes and improvements to Guild's existing Disaster Recovery system to establish a Disaster Recovery framework that can prove rapid and successful recovery of Guild's IBMi systems, software and data in the event of a disaster. Work with your Disaster Recovery team regularly to evaluate processes and identify gaps and needed testing to validate success in the event of a disaster.
•  Create project stories in Jira to develop solutions.
•  Work with Disaster Recovery team, IT and the Project Management Office (PMO) to implement solutions rapidly and with minimal business impact.
•  Document the IBMi Disaster Recovery solutions and post on SharePoint.
•  Provide technical guidance and collaborate with project planning leadership to understand project requirements and expectations.
•  Collaborate with cross-functional teams to integrate various software components and third-party services.
•  Research Technical requirements to determine if existing technology needs to be replaced or supplemented with new or emerging technology. Provide Proof of Concept (P.O.C.) to department leadership for approval.
•  Maintain comprehensive technical documentation, including system architecture, codebase, and deployment processes.
•  Implement and enforce security best practices to protect the application and data from potential threats.
•  Monitor database performance and implement necessary changes to assure optimal database speed and integrity.
•  Collaborate with IT security personnel to ensure proper restrictions and access is established on database objects, files and source.
•  Provide expertise and recommendations on improvements and needed maintenance to the IBMi application environment and/or database.
•  Provide expertise to create, define and enforce change management rules for database code and objects.
•  Apply knowledge to track database objects in the system and provide improved strategies and resolution(s).
•  Understand needs of users and monitor user access and security to the database.
•  Communicates regularly with Technology leaders.
•  Inspect index advisor data, SQL plan cache, etc. in order to ensure good database performance.
•  Provide proactive and reactive data management support and training to front-end and back-end users.
•  Determine, enforce and document database policies, procedures and standards.
•  Map out conceptual design for planned database changes for both back-end organization of data and front-end accessibility for end-users and provide recommendations for improvements to leadership.
•  Maintain system and data standards, including adherence to the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) compliance and the Data Protection Act.
•  Write documentation, including standards, procedures and definitions for the IBMi stack.
•  Synchronize testing and production data environments to meet the needs of users on those environments.
•  Perform data migrations between environments assuring appropriate masking of data and necessary security settings appropriate for each environment.
•  Commission and install new applications and customize existing database applications/tools in order to make them fit for purpose.
•  Create, maintain, and manage application architecture models and other various design components.
•  Interpret, use, and apply information contained within application architecture to inform a range of business improvement activities, particularly those involved in the design, development, enhancement and maintenance of IT applications.
•  Partner continuously with key IT Leaders to ensure that the overall application architecture is maintained in a coherent manner and that appropriate considerations are made for security and quality.
•  Ensure that the respective application, data, and technology perspectives are in line with the organization's technology and governance strategies, policies, and standards.
•  Create and discuss architecture solutions, component diagrams and design documents to solve Information Technology and business challenges for upfront agreed direction.
•  Assist in maturing application architecture management practices.
•  Conduct and/or actively participate in meetings related to designated project(s) with applicable technical stakeholders/leaders.
•  Think broadly and strategically about the overall technical landscape solutions needed to propel our business needs.
•  Share best practices, lessons learned and consistently update the application architecture requirements based on changing technologies and knowledge related to recent, current and upcoming vendor products and solutions.
•  Contribute feedback and input concerning architecture and operations to Senior Management.
•  Contribute recommendations for system changes, including redesign and enhancements to ensure process efficiency, staff productivity, usability, and customer satisfaction to Senior Management.
•  Help design and -re-design in-house RESTful API's. Work with third party web services and API's.
•  Help maintain sound architecture practices for complex and scalable enterprise-level applications.
•  Use expertise to answer technical questions and concepts; Work to distribute technical knowledge throughout the team.
•  Assist in project planning sessions to determine project scope and architectural approach as applicable on appropriate sized initiative.
•  Properly document architectural flow functionality (design docs, in-line, wiki, etc.)
•  Participate in creation of training materials, job aids, as well as any new rollouts or updates.
•  Perform other duties as assigned. Qualifications
•  Bachelor's Degree directly related to the position or equivalent, required. A combination of education and experience may be
considered in lieu of the Bachelor's degree.
•  Minimum seven years' experience working as a Database Engineer or related role and experience working on multiple projects of high complexity, preferable in the financial services or mortgage servicing industries.
•  Minimum five years supervisory or leadership experience.
•  Expert IBMi DB2 database management skills.
•  Expert management and monitoring of data security and integrity.
•  Expert with performance monitoring, optimization, tuning and management.
•  Experience creating and managing elements of a "data centric" strategy such as logical files, views and stored procedures.
•  Ability to architect, design and diagram database systems for high traffic systems.
•  Application development experience on IBMi.
•  Experience managing, analyzing, and indexing.
•  Ability to conduct SQL code review with developers and provide expert advice.
•  Proficient at communicating technical designs and documentation to development teams.
•  Ability to forecast, plan and implement changes to prepare for future needs.
•  Team-oriented individual with the ability to work across diverse teams and skill levels.
•  Database tuning experience running diagnostics and doing query optimization and other performance tuning.
•  Knowledge and know how to troubleshoot potential database issues and experience with best practices around database operations.
•  Passionate about delivering excellence in customer service within a team environment.
•  Strong listening skills and a high level of comprehension to conceptualize effectively, ideas into a process/tool.
•  Ability to organize and manage multiple priorities simultaneously.
•  Must be able to handle confidential matters with discretion.
•  Excellent verbal and written communication skills required.
•  Highly organized and detail-oriented; ability to work in a fast-paced, metrics-driven environment required.
•  Proficiency in Microsoft Office Suite, Word, Excel, Wiki, collaborative cloud-based programs, and third-party software applications required.
•  Commitment to company values.
•  Customer Service - Proactive attention to each person
•  Integrity - Do and say what's right
•  Respect - Treat others with dignity . click apply for full job details