Role overview

This role is the senior authority on our Microsoft SQL Server estate. It covers mission-critical, multi-tenant production databases that serve mortgage lenders and financial institutions.

You will own the architecture of the platform, including HA/DR design, performance standards, security controls and change governance. You will also lead the database workstream of our migration to new hosted private-cloud and Azure environments, from planning and rehearsals through production cutover and stabilisation.

You will act as technical lead and mentor for a team of contract DBAs. You will be the final escalation point for database incidents and the person customers, auditors and leadership rely on for database answers. The role includes a structured handover from the current senior DBA through December 31, 2026.

Key responsibilities

Architecture and platform ownership

- Own the target-state architecture for SQL Server 2019/2025 and Azure SQL (Database, Managed Instance, SQL Server on VMs) across production, DR and non-production.
- Design, build and govern Always On Availability Groups, WSFC and log shipping; set and prove RTO/RPO for every production tier through scheduled failover and recovery drills.
- Define database standards: instance configuration, patching cadence, backup policy, index and statistics maintenance, and naming and security baselines.
- Lead capacity planning and storage forecasting; present growth and cost projections to IT leadership.

Migration leadership

- Lead the database workstream of the data center and cloud migration: inventory, dependency mapping, sequencing, runbooks and go/no-go criteria.
- Plan and run migration rehearsals, data freezes, replication and synchronization, validation and reconciliation, cutover, and rollback.
- Keep customer-facing downtime within approved maintenance windows; act as database lead on cutover bridges.

Performance engineering

- Be the escalation point for the hardest performance problems: execution plans, Query Store, wait statistics, Extended Events and DMVs.




- Work with development teams to fix ORM anti-patterns, N+1 queries, blocking chains and lock contention at the code and schema level.
- Set performance baselines and SLA-aligned alerting thresholds. Security, compliance and governance
- Own database security design: role-based access, least privilege, auditing, TDE and encryption, and AD/Kerberos authentication.
- Produce database evidence for client due diligence, SOC 2 and security questionnaires.
- Approve schema migrations, deployment scripts and production changes through the formal change management process.

Leadership and operations

- Act as technical lead for contract DBAs: assign work, review changes and runbooks, and coach on standards.
- Serve as final escalation in the on-call rotation; lead root cause analysis and post-incident reviews for database outages.
- Drive automation of routine DBA work with PowerShell (dbatools), SQL Agent and CI/CD pipelines.
- Maintain architecture documentation, runbooks and the team knowledge base.

Required skills and experience

- 10+ years of hands-on SQL Server DBA experience, including 3+ years as senior or lead DBA for mission-critical production environments (financial services strongly preferred).
- Expert-level SQL Server 2019/2022/2025 on Windows Server 2019/2022, including installation, configuration, patching and version upgrades.
- Has designed (not only supported) Always On Availability Groups and WSFC across production and DR sites, including multi-subnet and failover testing.
- Has led at least two production database migrations of multi-terabyte or 50+ database scale, on-premises to cloud or between data centers,



including cutover and rollback planning.
- Advanced T-SQL and performance tuning: execution plans, Query Store, wait statistics, Extended Events, DMVs, index design and partitioning of very large tables.
- Backup and recovery design with proven point-in-time restores and DR exercises against defined RTO/RPO.
- Windows Server administration, Active Directory and Kerberos authentication (SPNs, delegation) for SQL Server.
- Hands-on Azure SQL experience (Managed Instance and/or Azure SQL Database), including hybrid connectivity.
- PowerShell automation for DBA tasks at scale.
- Has led and mentored other DBAs, including reviewing their work and setting standards.
- Works within ITIL change, incident and problem management; comfortable presenting to customers and auditors.

Desirable qualifications

- Microsoft DP-300 (Azure Database Administrator Associate), legacy MCSE Data Management & Analytics, or Azure Solutions Architect certification.
- dbatools, Redgate SQL Monitor, SolarWinds DPA, SentryOne or equivalent monitoring platforms.
- APM tools (Dynatrace, Recent Relic, Datadog) and correlating application traces with database diagnostics.
- Database CI/CD (Flyway, Liquibase, Redgate Deploy, Azure DevOps).
- Infrastructure as Code (Terraform, Bicep) for database platforms.
- SSIS in a data warehousing or reporting context.
- Experience with mortgage, banking or other regulated financial data, and with SOC 2, ISO 27001, PCI or GLBA controls.
- Secondary platforms such as PostgreSQL or Oracle.

Key competencies

- Technical leadership: makes sound architecture calls and explains the trade-offs.
- Calm under pressure: leads outage bridges and cutover nights with clear communication.
- Ownership: follows problems through to root cause and permanent fix.
- Mentoring: raises the skill level of the DBAs around them.
- Clear written and verbal communication with engineers, customers and executives.
- Attention to detail in change control, documentation and data integrity.

📌 Senior Database Administrator (Microsoft SQL Server) (India)
🏢 HeadSpin
📍 India