Database Engineer - Database Administrator

Database Engineer (DBA)

Company: THG Ingenuity    Location: Manchester (Head Office)

Reports to: Database Platform Manager  

Role Overview

We are looking for a Database Engineer to help run and improve our database platform.

Our estate runs on Google Cloud Platform following a recent migration to self-managed services. There is plenty still to do in the next phase of modernising the estate, and you will be hands-on in that work as well as in the day-to-day running of the platform.

You will work alongside a small team of database engineers and closely with engineering and infrastructure teams, keeping our database environments secure, reliable and performant. There is real scope to grow here, and you will be supported to deepen your technical expertise and take on more as you do.

The role participates in a rotating on-call rota and occasionally requires out-of-hours work to support deployments, maintenance or incident response.

Key Responsibilities

Database administration

• Install, configure, maintain and upgrade PostgreSQL and SQL Server environments across development, test and production

• Ensure database servers are securely configured, patched and compliant with operational standards

• Own backup, restore and maintenance strategies, and test recovery procedures regularly

• Maintain database security, access control and auditing practices

Cloud and infrastructure

• Deploy and manage database environments in Google Cloud Platform, using Compute Engine instances or managed services such as Cloud SQL where appropriate

• Configure networking, storage and security controls for cloud-hosted database systems

• Support the remaining on-premise footprint and the realities of running a hybrid estate

Modernisation

• Contribute to migration and consolidation work across the estate, covering schema and code conversion, data migration, testing and cutover

• Help shape and deliver the next phase of modernisation across the estate

• Bring ideas forward: if you think there is a better way to do something, we want to hear it

Resilience and performance

• Build and maintain high availability and disaster recovery solutions, including replication

• Identify and resolve performance issues, and work with development teams on query, indexing and schema design

• Maintain monitoring and alerting so problems are caught proactively rather than reported by users

Automation and change

• Automate provisioning, patching, backups and routine maintenance

• Keep all scripts, configuration and database change in GitHub, delivered through CI/CD pipelines and proper change management

• Contribute to database standards, runbooks and documentation

Operational support

• Participate in the rotating on-call rota supporting production systems

• Provide day-to-day support to engineering and infrastructure teams

• Take part in incident response and post-incident review

Skills and Experience

Essential

• PostgreSQL (core requirement): solid production administration experience covering configuration, upgrades, backup and recovery, replication and basic performance tuning

• Microsoft SQL Server: production administration including availability groups, backups, patching and maintenance

• SQL: able to write and optimise complex queries and read an execution plan

• Google Cloud Platform: deploying and managing database infrastructure in GCP (Compute Engine, Cloud SQL, storage, networking, IAM)

• High availability and disaster recovery: supporting HA/DR architectures and replication technologies

• Backup and recovery: strong understanding of strategies and hands-on restore experience

• GitHub and CI/CD: working with source control day to day and comfortable with change management in a production environment

• Automation: scripting in Python, PowerShell or Bash to remove manual toil

• Monitoring and alerting: using enterprise tooling such as Prometheus, Grafana, Cloud Monitoring or equivalent

• On-call: willing to join a rotating rota and handle production incidents

• Communication: clear written and verbal communication, and effective collaboration with engineering teams

Desirable

• Migration experience: moving production workloads between database engines

• Couchbase or comparable NoSQL / document-store experience

• CockroachDB or other distributed SQL platforms

• Infrastructure as code: Terraform or Ansible

• Database CI/CD tooling: Flyway, Liquibase or Redgate

• On-premise infrastructure: servers, storage, networking, virtualisation

• Kafka or streaming platforms

• Relevant certifications [if relevant]

You as a Person

• You are curious and like learning. The estate is changing, and you are keen to go deep in technologies that may not be your strongest today

• You challenge constructively. If something looks wrong or inefficient, you say so, with evidence and without waiting for permission

• You want room to grow. We have a culture that supports people stretching beyond their job description. If something interesting sits adjacent to your role, you will be encouraged to get involved rather than told it belongs to someone else

• You are methodical. Production databases reward care: you test, you document, and you think about the restore before the backup

• You communicate well with people who are not database engineers. You can explain what happened and why in terms a developer or a stakeholder can act on

• You are a dependable teammate. On-call only works when people look after each other, and you take that seriously