Trick Dog Technology is seeking a Senior AIX / Unix Platform Specialist for an urgent 6+ month staff augmentation engagement. This role is focused on accelerating AIX modernization initiatives, reducing long-standing infrastructure technical debt, and lowering audit and outage risk—without pulling internal engineers away from critical operational responsibilities.

This is a project-driven, outcome-focused role. The ideal candidate will partner closely with internal engineering teams and will meet with the customer prior to onboarding to ensure strong technical and cultural alignment.

Engagement Details

• Contract length: 6+ months
• Senior-level individual contributor
• Project-focused (not operational backfill)
• Customer interview required prior to onboarding
• Multiple candidates will be presented

Executive Summary of Need

The client is facing:

• Ongoing AIX modernization and upgrade pressure
• Persistent technical debt in core AIX platform tooling
• Significant audit, compliance, and evidence-generation workload
• Operational interruptions pulling senior engineers away from strategic initiatives
• Cross-team and vendor coordination complexity slowing progress

This role is designed to burn down deep technical debt, accelerate platform modernization, and unblock high-risk infrastructure projects.

Primary Focus Area 1: AIX OS Upgrades & Platform Modernization (Top Priority)

Current Environment

• AIX systems behind supported versions and out of compliance
• Active upgrade initiatives:

• AIX 7.1 → 7.2 / 7.3

• IBM Power8/9 → Power10

Responsibilities

• Lead and execute enterprise AIX OS upgrades with minimal disruption
• Support and guide Power8/9 to Power10 migrations
• Develop upgrade validation, testing, and rollback playbooks
• Reduce dependency risk through knowledge transfer to internal engineers
• Coordinate across infrastructure, application, and vendor teams

Required Expertise

• Senior-level AIX engineering experience
• Hands-on IBM Power architecture experience (Power8, Power9, Power10)
• VIOS, LPAR, and HMC administration
• Proven record of successful AIX upgrade execution in enterprise environments

Primary Focus Area 2: Core AIX Tooling & Infrastructure Technical Debt

Current Challenges

Long-standing instability in foundational AIX services is impacting automation, patching efficiency, and modernization velocity:

• RMC reliability failures
• NIM and NFS instability
• LDAP integration instability

These issues increase outage risk and slow strategic progress.

Responsibilities

• Stabilize and harden AIX central services (NIM, RMC, HMC)
• Resolve LDAP integration and user management reliability issues
• Reduce maintenance-induced outages
• Improve patching and upgrade velocity by strengthening foundational services

Secondary / High-Value Contributions

Where aligned to primary goals, the contractor may also contribute to:

• AIX and RHEL patch process redesign
• Automation enablement (Ansible)
• systemd-based service modeling
• Audit evidence generation and compliance reporting
• Linux service stabilization to prevent Unix team escalations
• Application-adjacent troubleshooting when platform configuration is the root cause

Explicitly Out of Scope

This role is not intended to provide operational backfill and will not include:

• Daily ISR or ticket queue work
• Routine access or entitlement requests
• On-call rotations
• Low-risk, repetitive Linux administration tasks

Required Qualifications (Must Have)

• AIX administration experience including 7.1 → 7.2 / 7.3 upgrades
• IBM Power platform expertise (Power8, Power9, Power10)
• VIOS and HMC administration
• NIM configuration and troubleshooting
• LDAP integration experience
• RHEL patching and lifecycle management
• Strong audit-aware mindset with experience generating compliance evidence

Preferred Qualifications

• Ansible automation experience
• systemd service modeling
• Experience in regulated or audit-heavy environments
• Experience modernizing legacy Unix environments

Ideal Candidate Profile

• Deep hands-on AIX expertise with modernization experience
• Comfortable leading complex infrastructure upgrades independently
• Strong communicator able to work across engineering, audit, and application teams
• Outcome-driven and focused on reducing long-term platform risk
• Able to balance technical execution with documentation and compliance rigor