SQL Database Administrator

Description

The company wants data-focused people for a permanent role. You will need at least two years supporting live database environments, and you will help keep database services secure, dependable and able to recover from failure while building your skills on large client projects.

The company is a UK-founded IT firm with more than 7400 staff and offices in the UK, Denmark, Norway, Poland, the Netherlands and Vietnam. It delivers IT transformation work to major UK organisations, with 18% of FTSE 100 companies as clients, and plans to win and deliver larger multi-million-pound projects over the next few years.

Responsibilities

• Look after live databases, investigate incidents and fix service problems.
• Watch database health, uptime and speed, and find areas to improve.
• Run and check backups and restores, and help maintain disaster recovery arrangements.
• Control database access and make changes through the agreed security and change control processes.
• Keep operational documentation current and pass knowledge on to colleagues.

Requirements

• Essential: At least two years supporting production systems, with hands-on work on relational databases as an administrator, developer or operations engineer.
• Essential: Enthusiasm for data and a drive to keep learning new skills.
• Essential: A logical, proactive way of working, taking ownership of your work and knowing when to ask for help.
• Essential: Ability to explain complex technical topics clearly to different audiences and share knowledge with colleagues.
• Essential: Proven problem-solving skills, finding root causes and fixing database faults to protect availability and performance, with practical skill in query tuning, index design and upkeep, and execution plan analysis.
• Essential: Proven understanding of database schemas and design, including tables, relationships, keys, constraints and indexes.
• Essential: Proven understanding of high availability and disaster recovery approaches for databases.
• Essential: Hands-on experience designing backup strategies, restoring databases and confirming recovery succeeded, with a proven grasp of recovery models.
• Essential: Familiarity with data migration methods and tools, including ETL.
• Essential: Proven understanding of database access controls and the principle of least privilege.
• Essential: Ability to write and maintain reliable SQL and admin scripts, and to apply production changes safely through impact checks, testing and rollback plans.
• Essential: Experience using monitoring tools to track database health, availability and performance, and to act on alerts.
• Essential: Eligibility to obtain the security clearance the role requires.
• Desirable: Experience testing database code or admin scripts, including unit testing where suitable.
• Desirable: Understanding of ITIL fundamentals, especially incident, problem and change management.
• Desirable: Experience with cloud platforms such as Microsoft Azure or AWS.
• Desirable: Experience supporting wider IT infrastructure.

Conditions

This is a permanent position.

The company offers guaranteed interviews under its Disability Confident scheme to applicants with a disability who meet the minimum criteria, if they opt in.

Reasonable adjustments or extra support during recruitment are available on request.

Benefits

• 25 days of holiday.
• Private medical healthcare through Vitality.
• Pension contribution and life assurance.
• Support for professional certifications as part of learning and development.
• The company Academy courses, seminars and certifications, which grow in management, methodology, leadership and strategy as you progress.
• Retail discounts covering restaurants, supermarkets, travel, leisure and health and well-being.
• Access to Employee Resource Groups for colleagues from diverse backgrounds to connect, learn and support each other.