IBM Support Engineer
Seven years on IBM z/OS support tools: modernizing mainframe debugging, building WebIPCS, and handling SEV1 production incidents under real customer pressure.
Overview
This city represents Phil's z/OS support tools chapter: the place where customer pressure, low-level debugging, and product-minded tooling all collided. The job was not just fixing issues after they happened; it was changing how hard problems could be investigated the next time.
The flagship project was WebIPCS, a modern React interface over IBM's classic green-screen IPCS dump debugger. It added visualizations, graphs, structured navigation, and a smoother debugging experience while preserving backward compatibility with the existing IPCS command ecosystem.
The arc widened into Analysis on Arrival and pyipcs: Python-driven dump analysis, automated artifact generation, and more accessible tooling for z/OS experts who needed faster paths from massive system dumps to useful evidence.
Buildings
- Founded WebIPCS, bringing React, graphs, visualizations, and structured navigation to IPCS without breaking classic workflows.
- Kickstarted Analysis on Arrival and helped push Python-based dump analysis toward reusable components such as pyipcs.
- Handled SEV1 enterprise incidents across JES, zCX, Docker, and OpenShift on z/OS, connecting assembler-level debugging with modern container environments.
Production Queue
- Translate hard-won debugging workflows into clearer tools, artifacts, and interfaces.
- Carry mainframe reliability, customer pressure, and support automation lessons into later AI systems.
Tech Tree
- React
- Python
- z/OS
- IPCS
- JES
- Docker
- OpenShift
- Assembler debugging
Diplomacy
- Clients
- Support teams
- z/OS engineering
- Pre-sales stakeholders
- Global engineering orgs
Trade Routes
- Dump analysis
- Modern debugging UI
- Outage response
- Python automation
- Customer escalations
Wonders
- WebIPCS
- Analysis on Arrival
- pyipcs evolution