Key Facts

Remote From:

Anywhere

Full time

Senior (5-10 years)

English

Hard Skills

Other Skills

•
Governance
•
Communication
•
Teamwork
•
Mentorship
•
Problem Solving

Job description

This is a remote position.

We’re looking for a Senior SQL Server DBA to lead L2/L3 operations and engineering across on‑prem and Azure SQL estates. You’ll own platform reliability, security hardening, and performance at scale, while driving automation and best practices. You’ll collaborate closely with the VW Service Representative (DBA Product Owner), application owners, and third parties to deliver a resilient, compliant, and well‑documented database service.

Requirements

What you’ll do

Operations & SRE
- Lead L2/L3 incident management for P1–P4 within the service window (06:00–17:00); act as point person for complex P1/P2 events and root‑cause analysis.
- Execute standard changes (<40h): ad‑hoc backups/restores, DB migrations, upgrades (outside hours by approval), permission management, monitoring & maintenance, disk/instance resizing, and controlled DDL changes.
- Coordinate patching and version lifecycle; ensure change records and PAD documentation are complete and auditable.
- Engineering & Performance
  - Own performance tuning (indexing/locking, Query Store, Extended Events), workload optimization, and resource governance.
  - Drive capacity planning and growth modeling across on‑prem and Azure SQL/MI.
  - Design and validate HA/DR strategies (RPO/RTO, failover testing); lead recovery drills and restore testing.
  - Produce proactive recommendations via periodic analyses; maintain a prioritized backlog with business impact and effort sizing.
  - Security & Compliance
    - Enforce RBAC/least privilege, encryption at rest/in transit, credential rotation, and audit trails.
    - Align to VWID processes; provide evidence for SLA reporting and compliance (e.g., AVG/GDPR).
    - Collaboration & Reporting
      - Partner with the VW Service Representative (DBA Product Owner), application owners, and vendors.
      - Maintain PAD documentation, and contribute to monthly service & hours reports (incidents/changes/requests/patching).
      - Mentor medior/junior DBAs; uplift runbooks, standards, and CI/CD touchpoints.
      - Standby
        
        Participate in P1/P2 rota as defined; resume next window unless continuous work is pre‑approved and billable per MSA.
    Tooling & platforms
    
    ServiceNow (ticketing), SQL Server Management Studio, Azure Portal/Azure Monitor/Log Analytics, Windows Server, PowerShell, Performance Monitor, Query Store, Extended Events; version control & change records per PAD.
    What you’ll bring
    - 8+ years as a SQL Server DBA with deep L2/L3 production ownership.
    - Strong T‑SQL, indexing/locking, and query optimization expertise.
    - Proven backup/restore strategy design and testing; HA/DR implementation.
    - Capacity planning and performance engineering across on‑prem and Azure SQL/MI.
    - Windows OS fundamentals; PowerShell scripting/automation.
    - Security‑first mindset (RBAC, encryption, auditing) and adherence to ITSM/ServiceNow.
    Nice to have: Always On AGs, replication, SSIS/Agent jobs, Azure Automation, IaC (ARM/Bicep/Terraform), Oracle DBA exposure, ITIL practices.
    
    Certifications
    
    Microsoft DP‑300 (Azure Database Administrator Associate); Oracle OCP (nice to have); Red Hat/Ansible; ITIL Foundation.
    
    Success looks like: Stable SLAs (MTTA/MTTR), zero‑surprise capacity, tested recoveries, actionable performance baselines, clean audit trails, and a visible pipeline of engineering improvements.