Database Administrator (DBA) — Job Description
Role summary
Manages, tunes, secures, and supports database systems to ensure availability, performance, backup/recovery, and data integrity for applications and analytics.
Key responsibilities
- Install, configure, upgrade, and maintain database systems (e.g., PostgreSQL, MySQL, Oracle, SQL Server, MongoDB).
- Design and implement database schemas, indexing strategies, partitioning, and data modeling for performance and scalability.
- Monitor database health and performance; perform tuning (queries, indexes, parameters) and capacity planning.
- Implement and manage backup, restore, and disaster recovery procedures; regularly test recovery processes.
- Manage high-availability and replication setups (streaming replication, clustering, Always On, Galera).
- Ensure database security: access controls, encryption at rest/in transit, auditing, and patch management.
- Automate routine tasks (provisioning, maintenance, patching) using scripts and IaC/automation tools.
- Troubleshoot production incidents, perform root-cause analysis, and lead remediation and post-incident reviews.
- Collaborate with developers and application teams on schema changes, queries, and migration strategies; review DDL/DDL changes.
- Maintain documentation: runbooks, maintenance plans, configuration baselines, and capacity records.
- Contribute to backup retention policies, data lifecycle management, and compliance requirements (PII handling, GDPR/HIPAA where applicable).
- Mentor junior DBAs and participate in on-call rotation for database incidents.
Qualifications
- Education: BS in Computer Science, Information Systems, or equivalent experience.
- Experience: 3–7+ years as a DBA or database engineer; senior roles commonly 5+ years.
- Technical skills: Deep knowledge of one or more RDBMS (Postgres, MySQL/MariaDB, Oracle, SQL Server) and familiarity with NoSQL (MongoDB, Cassandra) beneficial.
- Performance & tuning: Strong SQL expertise, query optimization, index design, and execution plan analysis.
- High availability & backups: Hands-on with replication, clustering, PITR, logical/physical backups, and recovery testing.
- Cloud & tooling: Experience with managed database services (RDS/Aurora, Cloud SQL, Azure SQL), monitoring tools, and provisioning automation (Terraform, Ansible).
- Scripting & automation: Proficient in Bash, Python, or PowerShell for automation and tooling.
- Security & compliance: Knowledge of encryption, RBAC, auditing, and data protection regulations.
- Soft skills: Problem-solving, clear communication, documentation discipline, and ability to collaborate across teams.
Working conditions
- On-call rotation for incident response; may include after-hours maintenance windows and migrations.
- Hybrid or on-site access to data centers may be required for certain environments.
Performance metrics
- Database availability and SLA/SLO adherence.
- Mean time to recover (MTTR) and incident frequency.
- Backup success and RTO/RPO adherence.
- Query/transaction latency and throughput metrics.
- Change success rate and deployment automation coverage.
Pay: $56.78 – $81.99 per hour
Work Location: In person
