Senior Database Administrator

Senior Database Administrator

Position Overview

The Senior Database Administrator is a highly skilled technical role responsible for the performance, availability, security and reliability of enterprise database systems supporting critical business operations. This role includes Microsoft SQL Server database administration, performance monitoring and tuning, migrations, lifecycle management, high availability, disaster recovery and advanced troubleshooting. The Senior DBA will provide technical leadership, act as the final escalation point for complex database issues and collaborate across teams to architect and deliver scalable, secure and reliable database solutions.

Key Responsibilities:

• Provide technical leadership on database systems and solutions and act as the final technical escalation point for all database-related issues.
• Manage, maintain, implement and support Microsoft SQL Server databases in a high-availability environment hosted in the cloud (SQL on VMs), using Always-On Availability Groups, mirroring and replication.
• Plan and execute SQL Server upgrades, migrations and lifecycle management initiatives.
• Perform database capacity planning, storage forecasting and resource utilization analysis.
• Conduct research, analysis, monitoring and profiling to improve database performance, functionality, recoverability and availability.
• Ensure data integrity, quality and security across all database systems.
• Participate in the Disaster Recovery Planning and Testing to manage and validate backup, restore and recovery strategies and perform regular recovery testing to ensure recoverability of business-critical databases.
• Architect and maintain databases for optimal performance and scalability.
• Manage database maintenance activities including index optimization, statistics maintenance and SQL Agent job management.
• Deploy and maintain database security controls and support security initiatives and audits.
• Cross-train peers and team members and provide guidance on complex database issues.
• Set and maintain high standards and best practices for database systems while refining, automating and documenting DBA processes through diagrams, SOPs and scripts.
• Manage and tune database monitoring systems.
• Participate in on-call rotation supporting business-critical systems.
• Participate in development code reviews to educate on SQL coding standards and best practices.
• Collaborate with developers, BI, management and other IT staff to ensure database system reliability, performance and provide solutions to complex data challenges.
• Evaluate, test, and recommend new technologies and tools.

Basic Qualifications:

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, or a related field.
• Fully Bilingual in English and Spanish
• Minimum of 5 years of experience administering enterprise production database environments.
• Excellent analytical, strategic thinking, and problem-solving skills.
• Experience supporting mission-critical production environments.
• Expertise in Microsoft SQL Server including Always On, replication, mirroring and performance tuning.
• Advanced troubleshooting and performance tuning experience including execution plans, indexing strategies, wait statistics and query optimization.
• Familiarity with Azure cloud services and experience managing databases in virtual machines within Azure.
• Knowledge of database monitoring tools.
• Strong communication skills and the ability to mentor other team members.
• Familiarity with database security best practices, high availability and disaster recovery.
• Understanding of ETL vs ELT concepts.
• Understanding of OLTP vs OLAP, BI tools and their integration with databases.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience in relational database administration including MS SQL Server, Azure SQL Managed Instance, Azure SQL Database.
• Experience with PowerShell or other scripting languages.
• Experience with database migration to Azure SQL.
• Experience in architecting databases for near real-time reporting.
• Experience with database automation, CI/CD pipelines and DevOps practices.
• Experience using source control systems such as Git.
• Experience with enterprise database monitoring platforms such as Redgate, Dynatrace, SolarWinds.
• Experience deploying and maintaining NoSQL database technologies such as CosmosDB.
• Relevant Certifications.