Delivery Consultant - IBM Datapower, APIC & MQ Appliance

**Introduction**At IBM Global Sales, we bring together innovation, collaboration, and expertise to help clients solve their most complex business challenges. Working across industries and geographies, you'll partner with colleagues, clients, and partners to co-create solutions that drive digital transformation and lasting impact.Success in Global Sales is built on curiosity, empathy, and collaboration. You'll connect technical understanding with strong people skills, building trusted relationships and shaping solutions that improve business and society. With world-class onboarding, continuous learning, and a supportive culture, IBM offers the tools and opportunities to grow your career. Join us and be part of a global team that's passionate about driving innovation and making a difference.**Your role and responsibilities**As a Delivery Consultant within IBM Hybrid Cloud Expert Labs, you will build long-term strategic partnerships with clients to help them maximize value from IBM technologies-primarily IBM API Connect, DataPower Gateway, and MQ Appliance. You will leverage deep technical expertise and strong consultative skills to support, deliver, and optimize solutions across hybrid cloud environments. You will join the Hybrid Cloud Expert Labs organization, where you'll sharpen your critical‐thinking skills and collaborate with Subject Matter Experts to solve complex challenges for clients around the world. In this role, you'll partner closely with clients and cross‐functional IBM teams to design, implement, migrate, optimize, operationalize solutions that support their business objectives and trailblaze new solutions that address real business challenges.You will also lead client enablement by delivering education sessions, facilitating workshops, and driving high‐quality solution delivery in alignment with IBM's proven methodologies.The role spans proactive and reactive technical support, root‐cause analysis, service optimization, and lifecycle guidance. You will collaborate with stakeholders to ensure that solutions meet customer needs and are delivered on time. Deliver high-quality solutions that meet customer requirements and adhere to our delivery methodology.Additionally, you will support clients on their Journey to Cloud, including OpenShift, Cloud Paks, Monitoring, Automation, Event Management, Service Management, and Application Resource Management. You will coordinate across IBM business units, participate in account planning, and occasionally act as a lead consultant or project manager.If you are passionate about solving complex customer challenges, learning cutting‐edge technologies, and driving successful outcomes, this role is an ideal fit.The Delivery Consultant has core responsibility in the following areas for Expertise Connect customers:Client Engagement & Advisory* Serve as a trusted advisor and single point of contact for assigned clients using APIC, DataPower, and MQ Appliance.* Understand client environments, requirements, and strategic direction to ensure solution alignment.* Educate, mentor, and deliver knowledge transfer sessions tailored to customer needs.* Identify opportunities to improve client value and support IBM selling initiatives.Technical Delivery & Platform Expertise* Support, deliver, and optimize IBM APIC, DataPower, and MQ Appliance solutions across on‐prem, hybrid, and cloud environments.* Lead or assist with migrations, upgrades, performance improvements, integration patterns, and lifecycle planning.* Provide proactive/preemptive guidance to avoid issues and actionable insights to prevent recurrence.* Deliver high-quality solutions using IBM's delivery methodology while ensuring SLO adherence and operational readiness.Operations, Support & Problem Management* Coordinate, mitigate, and expedite resolution of critical issues and outages.* Perform root-cause analysis, lessons learned, and implement preventive actions.* Provide proactive reports, technical assessments, and operational recommendations.* Track service levels and deliver accurate status reporting to stakeholders and management.Collaboration & Leadership* Work closely with IBM Labs, Support, and other service teams to address client technical needs.* Collaborate across business units to deliver consistent, high-quality service for multi-product engagements.* Participate in tactical and strategic account planning.* Serve as lead consultant or project manager when appropriate.Continuous Learning & Innovation* Stay current with IBM product roadmaps, emerging technologies, and best practices.* Contribute to solutions involving Cloud Pak(s), OpenShift, automation platforms, monitoring, event management, and service management**Required technical and professional expertise**Technical Expertise (Core Must‐Haves)* 5+ years hands‐on with IBM DataPower, API Connect (APIC), and MQ Appliance.* Strong in configuration, optimization, troubleshooting, firmware upgrades, migrations, HA, clustering, and performance tuning.* Deep understanding of DataPower Appliance (Physical and Virtual), APIC architecture (Gateway, Manager, Analytics, Dev Portal).* Experience with containerization (Docker, Kubernetes) and CI/CD pipelines.* Skilled with OAuth, JWT, LDAP, API policies, rate limiting, traffic management, and GatewayScript.* Experience with IBM MQ Appliance is preferred, MQ/ACE is a plus* Familiarity with cloud platforms (IBM Cloud, AWS, Azure), OpenShift, Cloud Paks, and hybrid architectures.Client Delivery* Supports customers implementing API Connect, DataPower Gateway, and MQ solutions.* Able to gather business/technical requirements and deliver solutions.* Leads workshops, mentors teams, and educates clients.Problem Solving & Operations* Strong troubleshooting and analytical skills, especially for performance issues.* Comfortable handling critical, time‐sensitive incidents.* Able to multi‐task across several high‐priority accounts.Communication & Soft Skills* Excellent written/verbal communication and client‐facing presence.* Able to present technical topics clearly.* Strong organization and time management.Teamwork & Adaptability* Collaborative, quick learner, adaptable to evolving technologies.**Preferred technical and professional experience**Certifications* IBM certifications in API Connect, DataPower, and (optional) MQ Appliance.* Cloud certs (AWS, Azure, IBM Cloud, GCP bonus).* Agile / Project Management certs optional.Core Technical Skills* DataPower Operations Dashboard familiarity.* CI/CD pipeline experience for DataPower/APIC.* Automation tools experience (bonus).* Knowledge of IBM MQ / ACE and webMethods (nice‐to‐have).* Strong grounding in networking, security protocols, integration patterns.* Monitoring/observability tools proficiency.* DR/backup experience.* Understanding of VMware/virtualization, LPARs.* Skills in Java, shell scripting, Python, Kubernetes, containers.* OS experience: Linux, Windows, Unix, AIX.* Practical cloud knowledge across AWS / IBM Cloud / Azure / GCP.Client Delivery & Collaboration* Ability to deliver enablement/training sessions to customers.* Comfortable acting as a bridge between clients and IBM Labs/Engineering.* Experience with large enterprise accounts and solution lifecycle (deployments, upgrades, production).* Able to create technical training, especially for automation.* Familiarity with testing practices for production‐ready deployments.Interpersonal Skills* Strong customer‐facing, negotiation, and stakeholder‐management skills.* Effective in complex, dynamic enterprise environments.IBM is committed to creating a diverse environment and is proud to be an equal-opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, national origin, caste, genetics, pregnancy, disability, neurodivergence, age, veteran status, or other characteristics. IBM is also committed to compliance with all fair employment practices regarding citizenship and immigration status.