Senior Database Administrator

Responsibilities

• Owns database architecture and strategy end to end, often collaborating across engineering teams.
• Designs and implements database solutions that are scalable, highly available, and fault-tolerant to support mission-critical payment workloads.
• Plans and executes database migrations, upgrades, and schema changes with minimal downtime.
• Builds and maintains automated database provisioning, backup, and recovery pipelines using Infrastructure as Code tools.
• Proactively identifies and resolves performance bottlenecks through query optimisation, indexing strategies, and capacity planning.
• Leverages AI-driven tools and techniques for anomaly detection, predictive performance tuning, and automated root cause analysis of database issues.
• Implements and manages database monitoring and alerting using tools like Prometheus and Grafana to ensure early detection of issues.
• Designs and enforces database security policies, including encryption at rest and in transit, access controls, and audit logging.
• Leads incident response for database-related outages, conducts root cause analysis, and drives postmortems to prevent recurrence.
• Develops and maintains disaster recovery and business continuity plans for all database systems.
• Tackles ambiguous, high-risk data challenges proactively and introduces new ideas to simplify complex data architectures.

Requirements

• 5+ years of experience as a Database Administrator or Database Reliability Engineer.
• Deep expertise with relational databases such as MySQL, including replication, partitioning, and high availability configurations.
• Solid experience with NoSQL databases such as Redis, MongoDB.
• Experience operating databases on AWS (RDS, Aurora) or similar cloud-managed database services.
• Hands-on experience with Infrastructure as Code tools like Terraform for provisioning and managing database infrastructure.
• Proficiency in writing scripts and automation using SQL, Python, Bash, or similar languages.
• Experience with database observability using monitoring and alerting tools like Prometheus, Grafana, and CloudWatch.
• Experience using AI-assisted tooling (e.g., AI-powered query advisors, LLM-based copilots, or automated performance analysers) to improve database operations and troubleshooting workflows.
• Strong understanding of database backup, recovery, and disaster recovery strategies.
• Proven ability to diagnose and resolve complex performance issues in high-throughput, low-latency transactional systems.
• Ability to clearly articulate, implement, and document design decisions around data modelling and database architecture.
• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field might be beneficial but not required.
• Experience in the fintech industry or with payment processing systems, particularly with PCI DSS compliance as it relates to data storage and handling.
• Experience with database change management and CI/CD for schema migrations (e.g., Flyway, Liquibase, gh-ost).
• Familiarity with data warehousing, analytical databases, or streaming platforms such as Kafka.
• Impeccable problem-solving and analytical abilities, especially under pressure during incidents.
• Effective communication and collaboration skills, with the ability to explain complex database concepts to non-database engineers.
• High agency and the ability to work independently while keeping stakeholders informed.
• A strong sense of ownership over data reliability and a commitment to operational excellence.
• Adaptability and willingness to learn new database technologies and infrastructure tooling.

Benefits

• Competitive salary
• Interest-free loan (up to 30% of salary)
• Full medical coverage
• MacBook Pro
• Hybrid working environment
• Work from Home budget
• Monthly internet stipend
• Monthly well-being stipend
• Generous personal leave policy and annual slow days
• Fully covered parental leave and sabbatical policies