Senior DBA

Mission Overview:

This is a consultancy mission delivered by Keystone Solutions at a client site. Our client is a key player in mobility managing more than 1000 parking lots across 9 European countries. To better serve its 100 million annual customers, the client is transforming to become a more digitally oriented player. To support this undertaking, we are seeking a Senior Database Administrator who will, as a Keystone Solutions consultant, take ownership of the client’s current database landscape, keep it fast, secure and available, and help migrate it from the client’s data centres to Microsoft Azure.

Consultancy Model at Keystone Solutions:

• You will be employed by Keystone Solutions and operate as a consultant, working primarily on site at the client location and in close collaboration with their teams.
• Your mission is to deliver impact within the client’s environment while leveraging Keystone Solutions’ knowledge base, coaching and community.
• You will follow Keystone governance for quality, documentation and knowledge sharing, and you will represent Keystone Solutions’ values in every engagement.

Key Responsibilities:

• Installation, configuration and maintenance: Install, configure, upgrade, administer, monitor and maintain the client’s databases, mainly Microsoft SQL Server and some PostgreSQL, on premises and in Azure.
• Standards and documentation: Set and maintain standards for the configuration, security and integrity of databases and database objects, ensure conformance, and keep procedures and documentation up to date.
• High availability and recovery: Design and run backup, restore and high availability solutions, and lead regular disaster recovery tests.
• Cloudification: Assess, plan and execute the migration of databases to Microsoft Azure, Azure SQL Database, Azure SQL Managed Instance or SQL Server on Azure VMs, together with the client’s in house Azure team.
• Security: Apply least privilege access, encryption at rest and in transit, auditing and patch compliance.
• Incident management: Respond to and resolve database incidents and service requests, ensuring minimal downtime, and act as the final escalation point.
• Root cause analysis: Investigate database problems thoroughly and implement corrective actions to prevent recurrence.
• Performance and capacity: Monitor database activity and resource usage, optimize performance, and forecast capacity and cost.
• Design support: Review database designs and schema changes with development teams.

All of the above will be performed as a Keystone Solutions consultant working closely with the client’s stakeholders, operations and development teams.

Additional Responsibilities:

• Takes responsibility for the performance, availability and security of the database platforms.
• Develops and maintains standards, procedures and automation for database administration, on premises and in the cloud.
• Plans and leads database migrations, including assessment, testing, cut over and rollback.
• Ensures that backup, recovery and high availability arrangements meet business requirements, and that they are tested.
• Advises the business and project teams on database technologies, cloud options, risks and costs.
• Ensures that data management practices for data quality, retention, classification and access control are applied.
• Investigates and resolves complex database problems, and drives permanent fixes. < /li>
• Shares knowledge, coaches colleagues and keeps documentation and runbooks up to date.

Experience and Technical Skills:

• You have at least 7 years of practical experience in database administration in mission critical production environments, with Microsoft SQL Server as a core skill.
• You have strong SQL skills and experience with query tuning and execution plan analysis.
• You have hands on experience designing and running HA or DR solutions such as Always On availability groups and failover clusters.
• You have hands on experience deploying and managing databases on Microsoft Azure, Azure SQL Database, Azure SQL Managed Instance or SQL Server on Azure VMs.
• Experience migrating databases from on premises to Azure is a strong plus.
• Experience with PostgreSQL is a plus.
• You have led database projects such as version upgrades, consolidations or security hardening.
• You can automate tasks with PowerShell or Python. Experience with infrastructure as code or CI or CD for database changes is a plus.

Education and Soft Skills:

• You hold a bachelor's degree in computer science or an IT related discipline, or have equivalent professional experience. Certifications are a plus, for example Microsoft Azure Database Administrator Associ