Lead Database Administrator

Job description

We are seeking a seasoned Lead Database Administrator to take full ownership of our database ecosystem. You will drive reliability, performance, and scalability across multiple database platforms on-premises and cloud while acting as the technical authority and mentor for our infrastructure team. Key Responsibilities Database Administration & Operations • Administer and maintain multiple databases including MySQL, PostgreSQL, MongoDB, and Redis across production, staging, and development environments. • Monitor database health, performance metrics, query execution plans, and system resources; resolve bottlenecks proactively. • Design and enforce backup, recovery, replication, clustering, and failover strategies to guarantee high availability. • Manage schema changes, DDL migrations, and version-controlled deployments in collaboration with engineering teams. • Define and uphold database security standards including role-based access control, encryption, and audit logging. Cloud Database Management • Administer cloud-managed database services on AWS (RDS, Aurora, DynamoDB), GCP (Cloud SQL, Spanner), or Azure Database platforms. • Architect cloud-native database solutions with a focus on scalability, resilience, and cost optimisation. • Lead zero-downtime migrations from on-premises databases to managed cloud services. • Continuously evaluate emerging cloud database technologies and recommend adoption where appropriate. Performance Tuning & Capacity Planning • Analyse slow queries, index strategies, and execution plans; implement targeted optimisations to meet SLA requirements. • Conduct regular capacity planning and performance benchmarking across all environments. • Collaborate with application engineers to review ORM usage and data models for performance at scale. Leadership & Cross-Functional Collaboration • Mentor junior DBAs and serve as the primary technical resource for all database-related decisions. • Establish and maintain database standards, runbooks, and operational best practices documentation. • Participate in on-call rotations and lead incident response for database outages. • Partner with DevOps to integrate database management into CI/CD pipelines and IaC frameworks (Terraform, Ansible). Required Qualifications • 4–6 years of hands-on database administration experience across multiple database platforms. • Deep expertise in two or more of: MySQL, PostgreSQL, MongoDB, Redis, Cassandra, or MS SQL Server. • Proven experience managing cloud databases on AWS (RDS / Aurora), GCP (Cloud SQL), or Azure. • Strong SQL proficiency — query optimisation, stored procedures, indexing, and execution plan analysis. • Solid experience with replication, clustering, sharding, and high-availability architectures. • Proficiency in Linux/Unix environments and shell scripting for automation and operations. • Sound understanding of database security principles — encryption at rest/in transit, RBAC, and compliance. • Experience with monitoring and observability tools such as Datadog, Prometheus/Grafana, or cloud-native monitors. Preferred Qualifications • Experience with Infrastructure-as-Code tools (Terraform, Ansible) for database provisioning • and configuration. • Knowledge of NoSQL data modelling patterns and distributed database architectures. • Familiarity with automated schema migration tools such as Flyway or Liquibase in GitOps • workflows. • Relevant certifications: AWS Certified Database Specialty, Google Cloud Professional Data • Engineer, or Oracle DBA. • Prior experience working in a SaaS or high-scale product engineering environment.