About the position
A major South African financial services group that provides direct-marketed insurance, investment, and value-added solutions is seeking a Senior SQL Server DBA who will be responsible for the performance, security, availability, and disaster readiness of critical SQL Server database platforms across the enterprise.
Responsibilities:
- Manage the full lifecycle of SQL Server instances (installations, patching, configurations, upgrades) across Dev, UAT, and production environments.
- Monitor overall database health, capacity, storage, and agent jobs to proactively resolve production incidents and performance degradation.
- Maintain complete operational documentation, including runbooks, inventories, and change control records.
- Participate in scheduled maintenance windows, release deployments, and on-call support rotations.
- Architect, configure, and maintain Always On Availability Groups, Failover Cluster Instances (FCI), log shipping, and replication.
- Perform regular DR drills, failover tests, and recovery validations to meet strict Business RPO and RTO objectives.
- Ensure end-to-end synchronization and alignment of DB configurations, logins, permissions, and certificates across primary and DR sites.
- Design and execute enterprise backup and retention strategies (Full, Diff, Log) using native tools and third-party solutions (e.g., Veeam).
- Conduct random and scheduled restore testing to validate point-in-time recovery capabilities and backup integrity.
- Proactively monitor backup health and rapidly resolve VSS, storage, or job failures.
- Collaborate with developers to review execution plans, optimize T-SQL code, refine indexes, and tune stored procedures.
- Identify and eliminate bottlenecks related to blocking, deadlocks, wait stats, tempdb pressure, memory/CPU constraints, and parameter sniffing.
- Enforce database design standards that maximize scalability, maintainability, and code efficiency.
- Design, automate, and maintain table partitioning strategies (partition functions, schemes, aligned indexes, and switching) for high-growth data.
- Manage data lifecycles by defining retention, compression, archiving, and purging workflows in partnership with business stakeholders.
- Enforce strict RBAC, least-privilege access, and authentication mechanisms aligned with financial regulatory requirements.
- Manage Transparent Data Encryption (TDE), backup encryption, SSL/TLS certificates, and master key lifecycle management.
- Lead database auditing, vulnerability remediation, security reviews, and evidence gathering for compliance audits.
- Develop PowerShell and T-SQL scripts to automate recurring health checks, capacity reporting, maintenance tasks, and job monitoring.
- Streamline manual administrative workloads to drive operational consistency and platform stability.
- Support future cloud readiness by assessing, migrating, and optimizing workloads for Azure SQL Database, Azure SQL Managed Instance, and Azure VMs.
- Troubleshoot hybrid database environments, including private networking, connectivity, and identity integrations.
- Establish and enforce enterprise SQL Server standards for deployments, backups, security, and HA/DR.
- Mentor junior team members and transfer technical knowledge to elevate overall infrastructure capability.
Minimum Requirements:
- 10+ years of dedicated Microsoft SQL Server administration experience in enterprise production environments.
- Deep Technical Expertise: Expert knowledge of T-SQL, execution plan analysis, index strategies, and native troubleshooting tools.
- HA/DR Mastery: Proven experience designing and managing Always On AGs, Failover Clusters, log shipping, and replication.
- Security & Encryption: Hands-on experience with TDE, certificate/key management, RBAC, and security hardening.
- Large Database Support: Practical experience with partitioning, archiving, and managing high-growth tables.
- Communication: Excellent written and verbal communication skills with the ability to act as an escalation point for developers and leadership.
- Preferred Certifications
- Microsoft Certified: Azure Database Administrator Associate (or equivalent SQL Server legacy certification).
- Relevant Azure Administrator / Azure Solutions Architect certifications.
- ITIL Foundation.
- Nice to Have
- Domain Experience: Background in financial services, insurance, or highly regulated environments.
- Cloud & Hybrid: Direct experience with Azure SQL ecosystem (Managed Instance, IaaS, DB) and hybrid networking.
- Tools & Scripting: Strong PowerShell automation skills and experience with enterprise backup software (e.g., Veeam).
- Infrastructure Knowledge: Understanding of SAN storage, VMware virtualization, Active Directory, and Windows Server internals.
Benefits:
Competitive salary based on experience (salary can potentially be more based on experience/skills)
IF you meet the above requirements and want to make a career-changing move, apply today by emailing your CV to [Email Address Removed].com
Desired Skills:
- Senior SQL Server Database Administrator (DBA)
- Senior SQL Server Database Administrator (DBA)
- Senior SQL Server Database Administrator (DBA)
