Principal Software Engineer - IBM i (AS/400) Connectivity

Role overview Help build a brand-new native connectivity agent that extends a SaaS automation and orchestration platform onto IBM i (AS/400) systems. The work spans low-level integration with midrange hosts, contributing to architecture decisions in an area where modern documentation is sparse, and validating behavior against live partitions. This is a senior, hands-on engineering role on a small team operating largely from first principles in an iterative agile environment.

Responsibilities - Design, develop, test, and maintain native software that integrates with IBM i (AS/400) environments. - Implement job submission and monitoring, spool file and message/data queue handling, and CL/RPG program invocation. - Wire IBM i functionality into the broader automation platform through clean, versioned extension points using native host-server APIs and IBM Toolbox for Java (JTOpen/jt400). - Apply IBM i user profiles and authority concepts to integrate per-user security and extend existing identity and credential management. - Debug complex issues spanning IBM i, Unix, and the Java tier. - Improve reliability, performance, security, and scalability of the IBM i connectivity layer. - Use AI tools to accelerate implementation, testing, and documentation while independently verifying correctness against authoritative IBM i references. - Document connector behavior and platform prerequisites for field and support teams.

Requirements - 10+ years of professional software engineering experience with strong Java 8+ skills. - Hands-on IBM i (AS/400) integration experience, including CL, native job, spool, and queue APIs, IBM Toolbox for Java (JTOpen/jt400), and DB2 for i. - Working proficiency in C, including ILE C on IBM i. - Experience integrating with vendor host-server or RPC-style APIs over TCP/IP, including connection lifecycle management. - Strong concurrency and multithreading skills, with experience building resilient long-running monitoring components. - Ability to work from primary IBM i API references rather than relying on unverified sources. - Experience with modern DevOps tooling, including Git, CI/CD, Docker, and Kubernetes. - Practical fluency with AI coding tools and the judgment to catch plausible-but-wrong AI output about specialized IBM i APIs.

Nice to have - Background with workload automation products such as Tidal, CA-7, Control-M, Stonebranch, BMC, or RunMyJobs. - Familiarity with IBM i clustering, high-availability setups, advanced authorization lists, and adopted authority. - Experience with RPG/COBOL environments, IBM i modernization projects, or mainframe/midrange migrations.