Job Summary
CNA's Lead Middleware Engineer operates as the subject matter expert managing full lifecycle of middleware services. A high-level individual contributor role within the Infrastructure Engineering and Operations that successfully manages services delivered by one or more external service providers. This position works through external service providers to ensure secure and stable operation of CNA's middleware infrastructure including availability reliability quality and adherence to CNA's architecture standards. Ensures clear expectations and scope requirements are provided to vendor partners and CNA teams and that all agreed-upon outcomes are achieved on schedule within budget and with high quality. Acts as a key point of contact for infrastructure vendors and CNA internally defining business goals and measurements with the vendors building and maintaining strong relationships and measuring / monitoring vendor performance to drive continuous improvement. This position will be working extensively with application teams architects and through external service providers ensuring secure and stable operation of CNA's middleware infrastructure including availability reliability quality and adherence to CNA's architecture standards.
Essential Duties & Responsibilities
Performs a combination of duties in accordance with departmental guidelines:

• Provide technical leadership on middleware technologies and collaborate with other infrastructure leads enterprise architects application developers and project managers to deliver suitable middleware solutions meeting the business need.
• Define standards and work with external service providers to design deploy and manage complex middleware environments
• Develop and implement strategies and documentation for migration consolidation and upgrade of middleware and hybrid integration components.
• Responsible for the availability performance and security of CNA's heterogeneous on- premise middleware infrastructure and public cloud services & integrations.
• Be a thought leader in researching and presenting innovative ways to solve complex middleware infrastructure related issues including working with IT Managed Service Providers and other vendor partners with root cause analysis SLA adherence and outcomes-based results.
• Utilize best practices and provide recommendations to improve application and system performance
• May perform additional duties as assigned.

Reporting Relationship
Typically reports to IT Director or above
Skills Knowledge & Abilities

• Extensive experience managing enterprise level Java and Microsoft based applications stacked with a variety of Java and Microsoft webservers (IIS IHS) application servers (WAS WAP JBoss) messaging & integration systems (MQ IIB IICS) hosted on heterogeneous operating platforms including Windows Linux AIX and HP-UX.
• Extensive experience integrating with public cloud native services from GCP and 3rd party partner & client systems.
• Demonstrated knowledge and understanding of various database technologies content management systems like FileNet AEM Documaker etc. SSO IBM WebSEAL F5 Load Balancers PKI and security devices and how these integrate with middleware technologies delivering complex high-performance business systems.
• Experience supporting Web Services API Standards Tools and Technologies
• Experience utilizing application monitoring tools such as Dynatrace OEM etc.
• Demonstrated knowledge and understanding application development methodologies such as Agile
• Proficient in DevOps tools and working knowledge of CI/CD pipeline management (e.g. Jenkins Maven Ansible Kubernetes Jira etc.)
• Knowledge and understanding of building automation for cloud environments and associated tools desired
• Detail-orientation with proven analytical and problem-solving skills and the ability to effectively plan and direct multiple projects and project teams.
• Define design and incorporate effective KPIs to measure the middleware services ensuring better availability and performance of the business systems.
• Well versed with ITIL's foundational Incident Problem Change Capacity CSI processes
• Willingness and ability to lead and provide mentorship to service provider's middleware leads & teams
• Superior interpersonal presentation verbal and written communication skills with the ability to think analytically critically and creatively

Education & Experience

• Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science Information Technology or related work experience.
• Minimum of eight years of working experience managing heterogeneous middleware technologies in a large enterprise.
• Experience in a business-facing IT role or similar experience providing customer service for an IT service.
• Experience working with IT vendors and/or Managed Service Providers in a partnership mode

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