Description

Role purposeEngineer, administer and support Microsoft SQL Server platforms used by business-critical banking services. The role is accountable for stable operations, performance, security, recovery readiness and disciplined delivery of database changes, while providing advanced troubleshooting and technical guidance to other engineers.

Key responsibilities: Platform engineering and administration
Install, configure, patch, upgrade and maintain SQL Server instances in accordance with approved standards.
Administer Always On availability groups, failover clusters, replication where approved, SQL Agent, maintenance plans and supporting Windows services.
Maintain standard builds, configuration baselines, inventories, runbooks and platform documentation.

Monitoring and performance
Monitor availability, capacity, backups, blocking, deadlocks, waits, storage growth and job failures.
Investigate complex performance issues using Query Store, DMVs, execution plans and Extended Events.
Implement approved indexing, statistics, configuration and query-remediation recommendations with application teams.

Backup, recovery and resilience
Operate and validate backup schedules, retention and restore procedures.
Participate in disaster-recovery tests, failover exercises and recovery evidence collection.
Ensure recovery issues are logged, tracked and remediated within agreed timescales.
Incident, change and security
Resolve escalated incidents, conduct root-cause analysis and implement preventive actions.
Prepare implementation, validation, rollback and communication plans for database changes.
Administer access using least privilege; support patching, hardening, encryption, auditing and vulnerability remediation.
Provide on-call support and technical leadership during priority incidents as required.
Continuous improvement
Automate repeatable administration and health-check activities using PowerShell and T-SQL.
Mentor engineers, review technical work and contribute to standards, knowledge articles and service improvements.

Detailed qualifications and experience
Education
Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Engineering or a related discipline, or equivalent professional experience.

Required experience
8-12 years of hands-on SQL Server database administration in enterprise production environments.
Strong experience with SQL Server 2016/2019/2022, including installation, configuration, patching and upgrades.
Hands-on administration of Always On availability groups and Windows Server Failover Clustering.
Proven troubleshooting of performance, availability, backup and recovery issues for critical applications.
Experience working within formal ITIL-aligned incident, problem, change and release processes.

Preferred domain experience
Banking or financial-services experience is preferred.
Experience supporting audited environments with evidence retention, privileged-access controls and segregation of duties.

Technical knowledge
Advanced T-SQL, execution plans, indexing, Query Store, DMVs, waits and blocking analysis.
Backup/restore, point-in-time recovery, integrity checks, log management and capacity planning.
Windows Server, Active Directory, service accounts, storage, networking and virtualisation fundamentals.
Working experience with Azure SQL services, Azure Monitor or comparable enterprise monitoring platforms.
PowerShell scripting and source-controlled operational automation.

Preferred certifications
Microsoft Certified: Azure Database Administrator Associate (or current equivalent).
Relevant Microsoft SQL Server certification.
ITIL Foundation (preferred).
Azure Administrator or Azure Fundamentals (advantageous).

Key Skills

Education

Any Graduate