Systems Engineer 1 - SQL Database Administrator

The SQL Database Administrator is responsible for the daily administration, maintenance, and support of SQL Server databases and related infrastructure.
The role monitors database health, performance, capacity, backups, security, and availability to ensure reliable production services.
It performs database installation, configuration, patching, upgrades, troubleshooting, performance tuning, and disaster-recovery activities.
The administrator supports application teams with database deployments, access management, SQL jobs, incident resolution, and technical guidance.
This position participates in a 24/7 on-call rotation and provides support during nights, weekends, holidays, and scheduled maintenance windows.
The role requires accurate documentation, adherence to security and change-management processes, and timely response to critical incidents.

Key Responsibilities – SQL Database Administrator / System Engineer II

• Administer, monitor, maintain, and support Microsoft SQL Server database environments across development, test, production, disaster-recovery, and high-availability platforms.
• Install, configure, upgrade, patch, and decommission SQL Server instances, databases, SQL Server Agent jobs, SSIS packages, Reporting Services, and related database components.
• Create and maintain databases, schemas, tables, indexes, views, stored procedures, functions, triggers, SQL Agent jobs, and security roles in accordance with approved standards.
• Monitor database availability, performance, storage utilization, capacity, replication, backup status, job execution, and system alerts; investigate and resolve issues before they affect business services.
• Perform SQL query and database performance tuning, including execution-plan analysis, indexing strategies, statistics maintenance, blocking/deadlock analysis, and resource optimization.
• Manage database backup, restore, retention, validation, and recovery processes. Regularly test restores and support disaster-recovery and business-continuity exercises.
• Administer SQL Server high-availability and disaster-recovery solutions, including clustering, Always On Availability Groups, database mirroring/log shipping, replication, and failover processes as applicable.
• Manage database access and security by provisioning accounts, applying least-privilege permissions, reviewing privileged access, supporting audits, and ensuring compliance with organizational security policies.
• Troubleshoot database incidents involving failed jobs, connectivity, authentication, data integrity, replication, storage, operating systems, application integrations, and performance degradation.
• Provide technical support to application, infrastructure, security, and vendor teams for database-related requests, deployments, integrations, migrations, and production changes.
• Plan and execute database migrations, upgrades, refreshes, consolidations, and capacity expansions with appropriate testing, change-control approval, rollback plans, and post-implementation validation.
• Develop and maintain operational documentation, database standards, runbooks, diagrams, support procedures, inventory records, and knowledge-base articles.
• Implement and enhance automation for monitoring, health checks, patching, backups, deployment, reporting, and routine database administration activities using approved scripting and tools.
• Participate in root-cause analysis for major incidents; identify recurring issues and implement corrective and preventive actions to improve database reliability and service availability.
• Support infrastructure and application projects by providing database design input, estimating operational impact, reviewing technical changes, and ensuring production readiness.
• Maintain compliance with change management, incident management, problem management, security, audit, and data-protection requirements.

24/7 On-Call and Night-Shift Support

• Participate in a rotating 24/7 on-call support schedule, including nights, weekends, public holidays, and emergency coverage as required.
• Provide timely response, triage, escalation, communication, and resolution for production database and infrastructure incidents outside normal business hours.
• Work scheduled night shifts and maintenance windows to support database patching, upgrades, failover testing, backups, migrations, releases, and other activities that cannot be performed during business hours.
• Monitor overnight production operations, review alerts and batch-processing results, resolve failed SQL Agent jobs, and ensure critical services are available for the next business day.
• Escalate high-severity incidents in line with established procedures and maintain clear incident records, handover notes, and post-incident follow-up actions.
• Maintain readiness to respond remotely or on-site, where required, to critical service outages and urgent operational needs.