Job Description & Details
If you know your way around green screens and legacy systems, this 12-month contract in Newark is a deep dive into core logistics tech. You are essentially stepping in to reverse-engineer and modernize mission-critical systems that keep maritime shipping, customs, and freight moving without a hitch.
What You'll Actually Be Doing
Expect to spend a good chunk of your early weeks acting more like an archaeological code detective than a builder. You'll be digging through homegrown RPG and CL programs, mapping out ancient DB2 tables, and untangling undocumented business logic. Alongside the AS400 core maintenance, you will own the IBM WebSphere middleware and make sure all those automated EDI transactions with rail, trucking, and customs agencies actually talk to each other without dropping packets.
The Core Tech Stack
You absolutely cannot fake your way through this without rock-solid AS400 fundamentals, specifically RPG, CL, and DB2. But the real kicker here is the integration layer—you need heavy hands-on experience with IBM WebSphere (MQ, Integration Bus, B2B) and deep fluency in maritime EDI transaction sets like 210, 214, 301, 310, and 322. If you don't know the difference between a 301 booking confirmation and an 856 ASN, you are going to struggle. They also want someone who can bridge the gap to modern tech by building REST and SOAP APIs to connect the mainframe with SaaS port tools.
Interview Expectations
When you sit down with the engineering lead, be ready to walk through a time you debugged a catastrophic batch or spool job failure on a legacy system under pressure, because they want to see your troubleshooting methodology. They will likely also drill you on WebSphere integration patterns and how you handle complex EDI translation mapping errors when a shipping line suddenly changes their data format. The hiring manager is secretly testing whether you panic when dealing with undocumented, mission-critical spaghetti code or if you methodically map it out.
Application Advice
Make sure your resume screams enterprise legacy integration rather than just basic database queries. Explicitly highlight your hands-on work with RPG, CL, DB2, and specific EDI transaction sets right at the top so the ATS picks them up immediately. If you have any experience tying AS400 environments to modern REST APIs or WebSphere middleware, put that front and center to show you are not just a maintenance coder, but someone who can actually modernize their logistics workflow.