OpenVMS Support Engineer

Role: OpenVMS Support Engineer

Location: Reading, Leeds or Paddington

Contract

Inside IR35

The Role
You will be responsible for the administration, support, and maintenance of OpenVMS systems running on a telecom platform.
The role requires hands on expertise in day to day operations, system health management, and platform resilience, ensuring services run reliably in a 24x7 production environment.

Your responsibilities:
Administer, support, and maintain OpenVMS systems supporting critical telecom applications.
Perform day to day operational activities including monitoring, job control, and system housekeeping.
Manage system upgrades, patches, and OpenVMS version migrations with minimal service impact.
Control and troubleshoot batch jobs, queues, and system processes to ensure smooth operations.
Execute and monitor backup and restore activities, ensuring data integrity and recoverability.
Participate in disaster recovery planning, testing, and execution for OpenVMS platforms.
Develop, maintain, and execute VMS DCL scripts for automation and operational efficiency.
Perform incident analysis, root cause identification, and support problem resolution in line with ITIL practices.
Maintain operational documentation and support handovers across shifts and teams.
Collaborate with application, infrastructure, and vendor teams to ensure platform stability.

Your Profile
Essential skills/knowledge/experience:
Strong hands on experience in OpenVMS system administration in production environments.
Practical experience supporting telecom or other mission critical platforms.
Expertise in OpenVMS DCL Scripting for operations and automation.

Proven experience in:
a. System monitoring and health checks
b. Batch job and queue management
c. User and process administration
Hands on experience with backups, restores, and recovery procedures.
Experience managing or supporting system upgrades, patches, and migrations.
Ability to perform day to day L2/L3 operational support in a structured manner.
Understanding of high availability, stability, and operational resilience requirements.
Strong troubleshooting and analytical skills.
Willingness to work in shifts/on call as required in a telecom environment.

Desirable skills/knowledge/experience:
Experience working in a 24x7 telecom operations environment.
Exposure to disaster recovery drills and failover testing.
Knowledge of ITIL processes (Incident, Problem, Change Management).
Experience with Legacy system modernisation or migration programmes.
Familiarity with integration of OpenVMS with other Unix/Linux or Middleware platforms.
Good documentation and stakeholder communication skills.