Role Summary :

The Database L2 Lead is responsible for end to end ownership of enterprise SQL Server platforms, ensuring high availability, performance, security, and compliance across production and non production environments.

This role acts as a technical and operational lead, handling L2/L3 escalations, driving problem management, governing change and risk, and mentoring junior DBAs.

The position requires strong hands on engineering capability, decision making in high impact scenarios, and close collaboration with application, infrastructure, security, and AMS teams to maintain a resilient and well governed database ecosystem.

Key Responsibilities :

1) Incident, Problem & Escalation Management :

- Act as L2/L3 escalation point for complex SQL Server issues escalated from L1/AMS teams.
- Lead troubleshooting for availability, performance, corruption, replication, and failover related incidents.
- Own and drive Root Cause Analysis (RCA) for recurring and high severity incidents, ensuring timely submission within SLA.
- Proactively identify patterns, risks, and systemic issues and drive permanent corrective actions.

2) Database Platform Engineering & Availability :

- Manage and optimize SQL Server environments across standalone, clustered, and Always On Availability Groups.
- Own replication, HA/DR configurations, and validate failover readiness through regular health checks.
- Perform installation, configuration, patching, cumulative updates, and version upgrades with minimal downtime.
- Ensure production stability through proactive health validation and preventive maintenance.

3) Performance & Capacity Management :

- Lead database performance tuning initiatives, including query optimization, indexing strategies, and execution plan analysis.




- Perform capacity planning for CPU, memory, storage, and I/O growth based on business demand and usage trends.
- Define and track performance baselines and recommend scaling or architectural improvements.

4) Backup, Recovery & DR Readiness :

- Ensure backup strategy effectiveness, restore validation, and recovery readiness using Avamar, Azure Backup, or equivalent tools.
- Proactively monitor backup failures and recovery risks and escalate before SLA breaches.
- Lead DR drills, validate RPO/RTO compliance, and maintain accurate DR documentation and evidence.

5) Security, Risk & Compliance Governance :

- Own database security posture, including RBAC, encryption (at rest/in transit), audit logging, and access reviews.
- Support vulnerability remediation, security audits, and compliance reporting.
- Enforce data protection standards and collaborate with Cyber Security teams on risk mitigation.
- Maintain continuous audit readiness with logs, monitoring dashboards, and compliance artifacts.

6) Change, Release & Data Governance :

- Review, validate, and implement schema changes, migration scripts, data fixes, and release deployments.
- Participate as a key reviewer in CAB, providing impact analysis, risk assessment, and approval recommendations.
- Ensure rollback strategies, test evidence, and post change validation are in place for all high impact changes.




- Govern production data access and changes with maker - checker discipline.

7) Leadership, Documentation & Continuous Improvement :

- Act as a technical mentor for junior DBAs and L1 teams, improving overall support maturity.
- Develop, review, and maintain SOPs, runbooks, and knowledge articles for steady state operations.
- Drive automation, standardization, and monitoring improvements to reduce manual effort and incidents.
- Influence stakeholders to adopt database best practices and reliability focused behaviors.

Technical Skills (Mandatory) :

Database & Platform :

- SQL Server Administration : Installation, configuration, clustering, AlwaysOn Availability Groups.
- Performance Tuning : Query optimization, indexing, execution plan analysis.

Backup, Recovery & DR :

- Backup & Recovery : Avamar, Azure Backup, restore validation and DR testing.

Cloud & Integration :

- Azure IaaS / PaaS : VMs, storage, VNets, NSGs, Azure SQL.
- Cloud Integration : Azure SQL, ADF pipelines for ETL/ELT workloads.

Security & Monitoring :

- Security : RBAC, encryption, vulnerability remediation, auditing.
- Monitoring Tools : New Relic, SolarWinds, Azure Monitor.

Automation :

- T SQL and PowerShell for scripting and operational automation.

Behavioral & Leadership Competencies :

- Solid leadership and decision making in high impact production and security scenarios.
- Excellent communication and cross functional collaboration skills.
- Governance driven mindset with focus on data risk reduction, resilience, and compliance.
- Analytical approach to identifying configuration, monitoring, and process gaps.
- Ability to influence stakeholders and drive adoption of database reliability and security best practices.

📌 Coca Cola - Database Lead - SQL Server (India)
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📍 India