Leads architecture, availability, performance, security, disaster recovery, and lifecycle management for enterprise SQL Server environments. Owns HA/DR strategy, capacity planning, incident escalation, upgrades, consolidations, cloud migrations, automation, compliance, and database standards. Provides technical leadership and mentorship to DBAs, partners with engineering and application teams, manages vendors and licensing, and participates in on-call support.
Position Summary
The Senior Database Administrator is a senior-level technical role responsible for the architecture, high availability, performance, security, and lifecycle management of enterprise SQL Server database environments. The role serves as the technical authority on database platform strategy, capacity planning, and disaster recovery, and provides mentorship and technical leadership to the Database Administrator team. Partners with the Senior Database Engineer and application development teams to establish and enforce database standards, and leads complex upgrade, consolidation, and migration initiatives.
Primary Duties & Responsibilities
- Architect, implement, and maintain highly available, secure, and scalable SQL Server database environments across production and non-production tiers.
- Own the organization's high availability and disaster recovery strategy (Always On Availability Groups, failover clustering, log shipping/mirroring), including planning and leading regular DR testing.
- Lead capacity planning and performance/scalability initiatives, proactively identifying and resolving systemic performance issues before they impact the business.
- Establish, document, and enforce database standards, policies, and best practices for security, backup/recovery, monitoring, and change management.
- Serve as an escalation point for critical database incidents; lead root cause analysis and drive preventive remediation.
- Lead complex, cross-functional projects such as SQL Server version upgrades, platform consolidations, and cloud migrations (e.g., Azure SQL).
- Evaluate, recommend, and implement database technologies, tools, and automation (e.g., RedGate, PowerShell, infrastructure-as-code) to improve reliability and reduce manual effort.
- Own the database security and compliance posture, including access controls, auditing, and encryption, in alignment with regulatory requirements.
- Mentor and provide technical leadership and career development guidance to Database Administrators and other team members.
- Partner with the Senior Database Engineer and application development teams on database design reviews, T-SQL performance tuning, and development standards.
- Manage vendor relationships and licensing for database platforms and tooling.
- Participate in an on-call rotation and provide senior-level guidance during off-hours escalations as needed.
Qualifications
- Minimum 8 years' experience administering Microsoft SQL Server in a production enterprise environment.
- Demonstrated experience with SQL Server 2017/2019/2022/2025, including planning and executing major version upgrades.
- Expert-level knowledge of T-SQL, including complex query optimization and performance tuning.
- Proven experience designing and supporting high availability and disaster recovery architectures (Always On Availability Groups, failover clustering, log shipping).
- Strong knowledge of RDBMS principles, schema design, normalization, and index strategy.
- Experience with cloud-hosted SQL Server environments (Azure SQL Database/Managed Instance or AWS RDS) strongly preferred.
- Experience with database security, auditing, and compliance frameworks (e.g., HIPAA) preferred, given the health care industry context.
- Experience with automation and scripting (PowerShell, dbatools, or equivalent) for routine database operations.
- Demonstrated technical leadership experience, including mentoring junior/mid-level DBAs.
- Familiarity with Agile principles and methodologies.
- Experience with RedGate SQL Monitor or similar monitoring/tooling a plus.
- Excellent communication skills, with the ability to translate technical concepts for both technical and non-technical/executive audiences.
- Strong project management skills, with the ability to manage multiple concurrent initiatives and competing priorities.
- Ability to work independently, exercise sound judgment, and drive initiatives with minimal supervision.
- Relevant certifications (e.g., Microsoft Certified: Azure Database Administrator Associate) a plus.
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