Job Title: Senior Database Administrator
Location: London, United Kingdom
Job Type: Full Time
Employment Type: Permanent
Experience Level: Senior
Senior Database Administrator
We are seeking an experienced Senior Database Administrator to manage, optimize, secure, and support enterprise database environments that underpin business-critical applications, reporting platforms, and operational services. This role will take ownership of database availability, performance, capacity, security, backup, recovery, and resilience across production and non-production environments. The Senior Database Administrator will work closely with software engineers, data engineers, infrastructure teams, cybersecurity specialists, application owners, and technology leadership to ensure database services meet operational, performance, and service-level requirements. The successful candidate will contribute to database modernization, cloud migration, disaster recovery, automation, performance tuning, and continuous improvement initiatives. The position requires strong hands-on expertise across enterprise database technologies and the ability to investigate and resolve complex production issues. The ideal candidate will provide technical leadership, establish reliable database administration practices, improve platform resilience, and support strategic technology initiatives while maintaining high standards for security, data integrity, scalability, and operational excellence.
Key Responsibilities
- Administer, maintain, monitor, and optimize enterprise database environments across production, development, testing, and disaster recovery platforms.
- Manage Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle Database, PostgreSQL, MySQL, or comparable relational database technologies across complex enterprise environments.
- Configure and maintain high-availability solutions including clustering, replication, failover, Always On Availability Groups, and comparable database technologies.
- Monitor database health, availability, performance, capacity, resource utilization, and service-level objectives using enterprise monitoring platforms.
- Diagnose and resolve complex database performance issues involving SQL queries, execution plans, indexing, locking, blocking, deadlocks, memory, CPU, storage, and I/O.
- Develop, test, and maintain database backup, restoration, replication, and disaster recovery procedures aligned with business continuity requirements.
- Plan and execute database upgrades, migrations, patching, configuration changes, and platform maintenance while minimizing operational disruption.
- Review and optimize SQL queries, stored procedures, indexes, database configurations, and application data access patterns to improve system performance.
- Implement database security controls covering authentication, authorization, encryption, auditing, privileged access, vulnerability remediation, and security hardening.
- Collaborate with application developers, data engineers, architects, infrastructure specialists, and cybersecurity teams on database design, releases, schema changes, and performance requirements.
- Automate database administration and operational processes using PowerShell, Python, Bash, SQL scripting, or comparable automation technologies.
- Establish database monitoring, alerting, performance baselines, capacity plans, technical documentation, operational procedures, and recovery runbooks.
- Lead technical investigations during major database incidents, service degradation, root-cause analysis, and complex production problems.
- Provide technical guidance and mentoring to database administrators and engineering teams while contributing to database architecture, modernization, and continuous improvement initiatives.
Requirements
- Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Software Engineering, Information Systems, or a related technical discipline; equivalent professional experience may be considered.
- 7 or more years of professional experience in database administration, database engineering, infrastructure operations, or a closely related technical role.
- Advanced hands-on experience administering Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle Database, PostgreSQL, MySQL, or multiple enterprise relational database platforms.
- Strong SQL expertise covering complex queries, joins, common table expressions, stored procedures, functions, indexing, execution plans, and query optimization.
- Demonstrated experience designing and supporting high-availability and disaster recovery solutions using clustering, replication, failover, Always On Availability Groups, log shipping, or comparable technologies.
- Strong knowledge of database backup, recovery, disaster recovery testing, capacity planning, performance management, monitoring, and business continuity principles.
- Experience with cloud database platforms across Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud Platform, or comparable enterprise cloud environments.
- Practical experience with Azure SQL Database, Amazon RDS, Amazon Aurora, Azure Database for PostgreSQL, Oracle Cloud, or comparable managed database services.
- Proficiency with database administration and monitoring tools such as SQL Server Management Studio, Oracle Enterprise Manager, pgAdmin, Redgate, SolarWinds, or equivalent platforms.
- Strong scripting and automation capabilities using PowerShell, Python, Bash, SQL, or comparable technologies for database administration and operational support.
- Knowledge of database security practices including encryption, identity and access management, auditing, privileged access, vulnerability management, and data protection.
- Experience working with IT service management processes including incident management, problem management, change management, service requests, and root-cause analysis.
- Familiarity with Windows Server, Linux, Git, CI/CD pipelines, virtualization, storage technologies, networking concepts, and infrastructure automation.
- Excellent analytical, troubleshooting, communication, documentation, and technical leadership skills; preferred certifications include Microsoft Certified: Azure Database Administrator Associate, AWS Certified Database – Specialty, Oracle Database certifications, PostgreSQL certifications, ITIL, or comparable credentials. Candidates must have the legal right to work in the United Kingdom.
Equal Opportunity Employer
We are committed to providing equal employment opportunities to all applicants and employees. Qualified candidates will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability, veteran status, genetic information, or any other status protected under applicable federal, state, or local law.
Job Type: Full Time, Permanent
Pay: £70,000.00-£75,000.00 per year
Benefits:
- Casual dress
- Financial planning services
- Free parking
- Gym membership
- On-site gym
- On-site parking
Work authorisation:
- United Kingdom (required)
Work Location: In person
