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Title: Senior IBM i (AS/400/iSeries) Application & Data Migration Specialist
Industry: Health Plan / Benefits Administration
Location: Remote
Employment Type: Contract 6 Months
Primary Environment: IBM i (AS/400/iSeries), NMIC400/Basys
Overview
The Senior IBM i Application & Data Migration Specialist will serve as the primary technical resource for a critical legacy IBM i environment during the organization's transition to a new Third Party Administrator (TPA). This individual will fill a significant knowledge gap created by the departure of a long-term application administrator and will take ownership of understanding, stabilizing, documenting, and ultimately helping transition the business-critical functionality and data contained within the NMIC400/Basys environment.
This is not simply an IBM i administration assignment. The successful consultant must be capable of entering an environment with incomplete documentation and limited institutional knowledge, independently reverse engineering custom applications and data structures, and determining how critical pension and benefits administration processes actually operate. The individual will support current production needs while simultaneously uncovering the application logic, historical data, reports, interfaces, dependencies, and operational procedures required for the future-state TPA transition.
Success requires deep IBM i technical expertise, strong RPG/RPGLE and DB2 for i knowledge, hands-on data migration capabilities, and the curiosity and judgment to solve problems when there is no existing playbook.
Purpose
The strongest candidate will typically bring extensive hands-on experience supporting custom IBM i, AS/400, or iSeries applications and be comfortable entering an environment where documentation is incomplete. Deep knowledge of RPG, RPGLE, CL, DB2 for i, Query/400, batch processing, job scheduling, IBM i commands, legacy reporting, and application-level troubleshooting is important.
This assignment provides the opportunity to become the technical bridge between a mission-critical legacy platform and the organization's future-state benefits administration environment. The work will directly protect operational continuity, historical data integrity, audit readiness, and the successful transition of critical pension and benefits information to the new TPA.
The consultant will gain unusual end-to-end ownership of a complex legacy modernization initiative spanning application discovery, reverse engineering, data architecture, migration, reporting, operational support, and platform retirement. Rather than maintaining one component of an established environment, this individual will influence how decades of institutional knowledge are identified, preserved, and transitioned.
Objectives
1. Become the Technical Authority for the NMIC400/iSeries Environment. Within the first 30-60 days, develop sufficient understanding of the NMIC400/Basys application environment to independently support critical application functions, batch processes, interfaces, reports, data structures, and operational activities with limited reliance on undocumented institutional knowledge. Reverse engineer RPG/RPGLE programs, CL procedures, DB2 for i structures, Query/400 reporting, job schedules, and application dependencies as necessary to understand how critical pension and benefits processes operate. Identify immediate operational risks, undocumented dependencies, and areas where loss of institutional knowledge could jeopardize business continuity or the TPA transition. Success will be measured by the ability to independently resolve routine application issues, explain critical system dependencies, support business information requests, and provide stakeholders with a documented current-state view of the environment.
2. Stabilize Legacy Application Operations Throughout the Transition. Throughout the engagement, maintain reliable operation of the IBM i application while the organization executes its TPA transition, ensuring that required batch processing, reporting, interfaces, data access, and operational functions remain available. Investigate and resolve application-level problems arising from system maintenance, patching, security modifications, infrastructure changes, or undocumented dependencies while coordinating with infrastructure and vendor resources when appropriate. Establish practical monitoring, troubleshooting, and escalation procedures that reduce the operational risk associated with the existing knowledge gap. Success will be measured by continuity of critical business processes, timely resolution of application issues, reduced dependence on unavailable historical knowledge, and avoidance of preventable disruptions during the migration period.
3. Deliver Accurate and Traceable Legacy Data for the New TPA. During the migration program, take ownership of identifying, extracting, mapping, validating, and reconciling the IBM i data required by the new Third Party Administrator. Work with business stakeholders, project leadership, vendors, and external technical teams to determine source-of-record data, historical requirements, field mappings, transformation rules, retention requirements, and reconciliation criteria across the legacy environment. Develop repeatable extraction and validation processes that provide clear traceability between source IBM i data and information delivered to the future-state platform. Success will be measured by accurate and complete migration datasets, documented source-to-target mappings, successful reconciliation, timely resolution of data discrepancies, and formal stakeholder acceptance of migration deliverables. AI-assisted data analysis or mapping tools may be used where appropriate, with all results independently validated against authoritative legacy data and business rules.
4. Preserve Critical Business Logic, Reporting, and Institutional Knowledge Before Platform Retirement. Before the legacy platform is decommissioned, identify and document the application functionality, business rules, operational procedures, historical reports, audit requirements, interfaces, data relationships, and dependencies that must either be migrated, recreated, archived, or retained. Investigate existing reports and business requests to determine how outputs are produced and what underlying data and logic they depend upon, then work with stakeholders to define future-state requirements. Establish documentation sufficient for qualified technical and business resources to understand critical legacy functionality without depending on one individual's memory. Success will be measured by completeness of the knowledge repository, successful recreation or disposition of required reports, audit accessibility, stakeholder validation, and demonstrated reduction in key-person dependency.
5. Enable an Orderly Transition and Retirement of the Legacy Platform. Through the final stages of the engagement, serve as the technical bridge between IBM i operations and the future-state TPA environment by validating that required data, reporting capabilities, business logic, operational knowledge, and historical information have been appropriately migrated, recreated, retained, or formally dispositioned. Identify unresolved dependencies and retirement risks before decommissioning decisions are made and provide technical recommendations to project leadership regarding readiness. Support final reconciliation, operational handoff, knowledge transfer, and retirement planning so that the organization can move away from the legacy platform without losing critical capabilities or information. Success will be measured by stakeholder approval of transition readiness, closure of critical dependencies, successful knowledge transfer, and an orderly reduction of reliance on NMIC400/Basys.
Critical Subtasks
1. Discover and Map the Legacy Environment. During the first 30 days, inventory the NMIC400/Basys applications, RPG/RPGLE programs, CL procedures, DB2 for i data structures, batch jobs, scheduled processes, interfaces, Query/400 reports, security dependencies, and operational workflows that support critical business functions. Conduct discovery sessions with available technical and business stakeholders while independently examining the environment to uncover undocumented dependencies. Prioritize findings according to operational and migration risk and establish a working system map that can be continuously refined. Success will be measured by the completeness of the inventory, identification of high-risk dependencies, and stakeholder confidence in the resulting current-state picture.
2. Stabilize and Support Critical Production Operations. During the first 30-60 days and throughout the transition, assume responsibility for application-level support of the IBM i environment, including batch processing, reporting, interfaces, security-related application impacts, and production troubleshooting. Investigate incidents independently using source code, job information, data structures, system commands, and available historical information rather than depending upon complete documentation. Coordinate with infrastructure resources when problems originate outside the application layer and document recurring solutions for future use. Success will be measured by issue-resolution effectiveness, operational continuity, and decreasing reliance on unavailable institutional knowledge.
3. Reverse Engineer Business Logic and Reporting. During the first 60-90 days, analyze RPG/RPGLE code, CL programs, DB2 for i data structures, Query/400 objects, batch processes, and existing reports to determine how important pension and benefits business rules are implemented. Trace critical reports and operational outputs back to their underlying source data and calculations, documenting logic that must be retained or recreated in the future-state environment. Validate interpretations with knowledgeable business stakeholders whenever possible rather than relying exclusively on technical assumptions. Success will be measured by validated documentation of critical logic, reports, dependencies, and business rules.
4. Extract, Map, Validate, and Reconcile Migration Data. During the active migration period, produce required legacy datasets and work with the TPA and internal stakeholders to map them into the future-state platform. Establish validation and reconciliation controls covering completeness, accuracy, transformation logic, historical requirements, and exceptions, and investigate discrepancies to root cause before final acceptance. Maintain traceability between IBM i source structures, extraction logic, transformation rules, and target requirements. Success will be measured by migration accuracy, reconciliation results, exception closure, and stakeholder acceptance of delivered data.
Equally important is demonstrated experience extracting, interpreting, mapping, validating, and migrating complex legacy enterprise data. The individual should be capable of reverse engineering unfamiliar applications and business processes rather than depending on complete specifications or existing subject matter experts.
Experience with pension administration, benefits administration, HR, insurance, claims, or similarly complex historical data environments is highly desirable.
By the conclusion of the engagement, the organization is no longer dependent on undocumented knowledge to understand or operate the critical AS/400 environment. Required legacy operations have remained stable throughout the transition; critical application logic, data structures, reports, and dependencies have been identified and documented; migration data has been accurately extracted, mapped, validated, and reconciled; required historical and audit information remains accessible; and the new TPA has received the data and knowledge necessary to support future-state operations.