Senior Database Administrator

Introduction

To provide specialist administration, engineering and operational ownership for enterprise database platforms across on-premises, Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services. The role ensures database services meet agreed availability, resilience, security, performance and recovery requirements, while enabling safe change, modernisation, automation and cost-effective growth. The Senior DBA acts as an escalation point and trusted advisors to application, infrastructure, security, architecture and business stakeholders. Duties & Responsibilities

Service reliability and BAU operations ·       Administer, monitor and support production and non-production database services against agreed SLAs and operational controls. ·       Perform installation, configuration, patching, upgrades, backups, restores, integrity checks, capacity management and lifecycle maintenance. ·       Diagnose and recover routine and complex database availability, integrity, access and performance issues; escalate high-risk or highly complex incidents and vendor engagement to the Technical Lead - Database Platforms. ·       Maintain accurate platform inventories, support documentation, runbooks, standards and known-error records. Performance and capacity ·       Monitor workload health, query performance, waits, blocking, execution plans, index health, storage utilisation and resource consumption. ·       Tune database configuration, queries, and physical design in partnership with application teams. ·       Forecast capacity and licensing needs, identify inefficient usage, and recommend right-sizing or service-tier changes. Security, risk and compliance ·       Implement least-privilege access, role-based controls, privileged access processes, encryption and secrets management in line with approved standards. ·       Perform or support database security reviews, vulnerability remediation, transaction auditing and access recertification. ·       Ensure database changes follow change, release, testing and segregation-of-duties controls. ·       Support evidence collection for internal assurance, external audit and regulatory obligations. Availability, backup and disaster recovery ·       Operate and test approved high-availability and disaster-recovery solutions and contribute to designs appropriate to workload criticality. ·       Support the Technical Lead and service owners in validating recovery objectives, and maintain backup retention, restore procedures and recovery evidence. ·       Coordinate planned resilience tests and ensure corrective actions are tracked to closure. Cloud database engineering: Microsoft Azure ·       Administer Azure SQL Database, Azure SQL Managed Instance and SQL Server on Azure Virtual Machines using approved patterns, standards and runbooks. ·       Configure and review identity, network access, private connectivity, encryption, backup, geo-resilience, monitoring and alerting. ·       Contribute technical analysis and execution support for migrations between on-premises SQL Server and Azure services, including compatibility, performance and recovery validation. ·       Use Azure-native automation and monitoring capabilities to standardise routine administration and improve service visibility. Cloud database engineering: Amazon Web Services ·       Administer SQL Server, PostgreSQL and potentially other Database workloads on Amazon RDS or Amazon EC2 using approved patterns, standards and runbooks. ·       Configure and review parameter and option settings, identity and access, network controls, encryption, backups, maintenance windows, monitoring and multi-AZ resilience where applicable. ·       Support and execute approved database migration and replication activities, with rollback, validation and data-protection controls. ·       Identify optimisation opportunities for instance classes, storage and licensing, and provide evidence-based recommendations to the Technical Lead and relevant cloud stakeholders. Automation and observability ·       Automate repeatable DBA tasks using T-SQL, PowerShell, Python and approved infrastructure or workflow tooling. ·       Create actionable dashboards, alerts and health reports that reduce manual checks and improve early detection. ·       Use version control, peer review and controlled deployment practices for database administration scripts and configuration artefacts. Change, projects and migration ·       Plan, document and execute database implementations, upgrades, deployments, migrations and decommissioning across development, test and production environments. ·       Provide database input to solution designs, project estimates and release-readiness reviews, escalating material architectural decisions to the Technical Lead - Database Platforms. ·       Validate data integrity, security, performance and recoverability before and after material changes. Stakeholder service and technical leadership ·       Translate complex technical issues into clear business impact, risk and options for decision-makers. ·       Provide practical database guidance to developers, engineers, security teams and service owners within approved standards, and refer architectural exceptions to the Technical Lead - Database Platforms. ·       Share knowledge, maintain usable documentation and participate in team cross-skilling to reduce key-person dependency. ·       Work constructively with vendors under the direction of the Technical Lead and contribute technical input on database products and support practices.

Desired Experience & Qualification

Essential ·                Relevant IT degree, diploma or equivalent demonstrable professional experience. ·                Relevant Vendor Certifications (Microsoft, AWS, Azure, etc.) ·                5 to 10 years of hands-on database administration experience, including practical responsibility for production Microsoft SQL Server environments. ·                Strong T-SQL administration and troubleshooting capability. ·                Practical experience with backup and restore, high availability, disaster recovery, performance tuning, security, patching and change control. ·                Working knowledge of Windows Server, clustering, storage, networking, DNS, certificates and authentication concepts relevant to database services. ·                Practical exposure to at least one public cloud and a sound understanding of secure, reliable database operations. ·                Ability to participate in operational support and after-hours change or incident activities when required by the support model. ·                PowerShell, infrastructure as code, CI/CD or database deployment automation experience. ·                Experience in a highly regulated, high-availability or financial-markets environment. ·                Current role-relevant Microsoft Azure, AWS, SQL Server, PostgreSQL or IT service management certification. Advantageous ·                Hands-on experience across both Microsoft Azure and AWS. ·                Azure SQL Database, Azure SQL Managed Instance, SQL Server on Azure Virtual Machines, Amazon RDS for SQL Server or PostgreSQL, and database workloads on EC2. ·                PostgreSQL administration experience, including managed cloud deployments. Technical Competencies Microsoft SQL Server:  Setup and configuration; engine internals; security; backup and restore; Always On and clustering; T-SQL; query and index tuning; capacity and licensing awareness. Azure database services:  Azure SQL options; identity and network security; monitoring; resilience; migration; backup; performance and cost management. AWS database services:   Amazon RDS and EC2 database patterns; IAM awareness; VPC connectivity; encryption; monitoring; resilience; migration; performance and cost management. PostgreSQL exposure: Core administration, role and privilege management, backup and restore, performance diagnostics and managed-service constraints. Operations and g