Manager - IBM I Server Hardware & Platform Governance

Costco IT is responsible for the technical future of Costco Wholesale, the third largest retailer in the world with wholesale operations in fourteen countries. Despite our size and explosive international expansion, we continue to provide a family, employee centric atmosphere in which our employees thrive and succeed.

This is an environment unlike anything in the high-tech world and the secret of Costco's success is its culture. The value Costco puts on its employees is well documented in articles from a variety of publishers including Bloomberg and Forbes. Our employees and our members come FIRST. Costco is well known for its generosity and community service and has won many awards for its philanthropy. The company joins with its employees to take an active role in volunteering by sponsoring many opportunities to help others.

Come join the Costco Wholesale IT family. Costco IT is a dynamic, fast-paced environment, working through exciting transformation efforts. We are building the next generation retail environment where you will be surrounded by dedicated and highly professional employees.

As a member of the IT Management Team, you are responsible for managing, developing, and leading a team of employees. Your role includes leading the specific functional responsibilities of your team, which involves overseeing team performance and deliverables. However, your role as a leader within our organization requires more than the management of resources and day-to-day operations. As a steward of the company, you are charged with the development and execution of your team's strategic vision and plan and ensuring that your team's actions align with the larger goals of the company and the IT Division.

The IBM i Server Hardware & Platform Governance Manager will serve as the strategic lead for a multidisciplinary team responsible for both the logical architectural standards and the physical lifecycle of the enterprise IBM i ecosystem. In addition to enforcing engineering governance and modernization frameworks, this role directs the Server Hardware team in managing the full hardware lifecycle-from strategic capacity planning for storage, memory, and throughput to the oversight of Hardware Management Dashboards and high-availability infrastructure. By unifying platform governance with hardware resilience and business continuity planning, the Manager ensures a stable, high-performance environment that supports seamless application modernization and robust enterprise operations.

As the primary conduit between your employees and upper leadership, your role in communicating and modeling the values and guiding principles of our company culture is of vital importance. All members of IT Management should strive to consciously and consistently foster a culture of engagement, trust, and "open door" communication.

If you want to be a part of one of the worldwide BEST companies "to work for", simply apply and let your career be reimagined.

ROLE

• INTEGRITY: When achieving benchmarks and goals, use methods/strategies that are consistent with the Code of Ethics and the Standard of Ethics for Managers and Supervisors. Always leads by example. Appropriately handles employee concerns and follows through to resolution.

• MEMBER SERVICE: Provides and ensures staff provides an exceptional member experience.

• ADMINISTRATION: Ensures proper department coverage (writing schedule and break aids if needed). Understands department budget, able to research and explain budget variances.

• MANAGING PERFORMANCE: Coaches and mentors employees to provide support and guidance. Has regular open and honest conversations with employees to discuss work performance and career development. Identifies learning opportunities to strengthen employee knowledge, skill and ability.

• COMMUNICATION: Regularly shares information with employees via meetings and one-on-one conversations. Successfully navigates difficult conversations with employees, members, and suppliers. Listens, expresses empathy and adapts to get points across. Addresses issues immediately to ensure a timely resolution and to avoid escalating the situation. Consistently demonstrates business knowledge during interactions with senior management.

• SELF-MANAGEMENT: Demonstrates sound judgment, taking a partner when necessary. Ability to maintain self-control in the face of hostility or provocation or in intense, hectic situations.

• INCLUSION: Encourages different approaches and ideas to work and to accomplish goals. Seeks employee input. Takes the time to get to know or reach out to candidates who show potential that may not come forward on their own.

• COMPLIANCE AND SAFETY: Takes measures to ensure employee and member information is kept confidential and adheres to IS security policy.

• Infrastructure Management & Resilience: Direct the complete IBM i hardware lifecycle, including capacity planning, storage optimization, and High Availability/Disaster Recovery (HA/DR) strategies, to ensure 24/7 business continuity and peak system performance.

• Comprehensive Observability & Governance: Oversee dual-layered observability-utilizing hardware dashboards and software runtime frameworks-to proactively monitor real-time system health, manage resource consumption, resolve incidents rapidly, and maintain strict SLAs.

• Architecture & Optimization: Enforce enterprise architecture standards, advise domain teams on best practices, and manage the development of cross-domain shared utilities to eliminate code redundancy and promote efficient asset reuse.

• Strategic Innovation & Modernization: Act as the strategic bridge between physical infrastructure and application governance by leading modernization POCs (e.g., APIs, DevOps) and ensuring all hardware investments and technical designs align with broader enterprise goals.

• This is a full-time management/leadership position (45+ hours per week).

REQUIRED

• Platform Governance & Modernization Experience in defining and enforcing enterprise-grade coding standards, database schemas, and architectural guardrails within an IBM i environment, Transforming monolithic applications into modern architectures (e.g., Modularization, ILE, Service Programs, and API enablement/JSON/REST)

• Strategic Capacity Planning & LPAR Management- Since this manager oversees the Hardware Engineering team, they must balance the physical resources of the Power Systems with the increasing demands of modern SQL workloads.

• Infrastructure Monitoring The Skill: Knowledge of IBM Power Virtualization (PowerVM) and Work Management.

• Hardware Observability driving the development and maintenance of Hardware Management Dashboards to provide real-time visibility into system health, utilization trends, and physical environmental metrics.

• Leadership and soft skills- Cross functional collaboration, Vendor & Stakeholder management, Risk Management to ensure zero-impact to production deployments.

• HIPAA Training and Supervisors Orientation (within 30 days of hire); Leadership Development 101 (within one year); Costco Pay Policies (within 90 days of promotion).

Recommended

• Proficient in Google Workspace applications, including Sheets, Docs, Slides, and Gmail.

Required Documents

● Cover Letter

● Resume

California applicants, please click here to review the Costco Applicant Privacy Notice.

Pay Range: $137,000 - $200,000, Bonus and Restricted Stock Unit (RSU) eligible

We offer a comprehensive package of benefits including paid time off, health benefits - medical/dental/vision/hearing aid/pharmacy/behavioral health/employee assistance, health care reimbursement account, dependent care assistance plan, short-term disability and long-term disability insurance, AD&D insurance, life insurance, 401(k), stock purchase plan to eligible employees.

Costco is committed to a diverse and inclusive workplace. Costco is an equal opportunity employer. Qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard of race, national origin, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, protected veteran status, disability, age, or any other legally protected status. If you need assistance and/or a reasonable accommodation due to a disability during the application or the recruiting process, please send a request to IT-Recruiting@costco.com

If hired, you will be required to provide proof of authorization to work in the United States. Applicants and employees for this position will not be sponsored for work authorization, including, but not limited to H1-B visas.