Lead Database Administrator

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.