Technical Lead - SQL DBA, SQL Server & Database Administration

SQL Server DBA Lead

Role Description

The role requires hands-on SQL DBA expertise, leadership, troubleshooting, availability management, performance tuning, backup/recovery governance and cross-team coordination.

Key Accountabilities

• Lead end-to-end SQL Server DBA operations, technical delivery and L2/L3 support.
  
• Administer installation, configuration, upgrades, patching, migrations, cloning, refreshes, SQL Agent jobs, storage and capacity.
  
• Manage Always On Availability Groups, Failover Cluster Instances, log shipping, replication and mirroring as applicable.
  
• Plan and validate full, differential and transaction log backups, restore testing, point-in-time recovery and DR exercises.
  
• Monitor health, availability, performance, space, jobs, alerts, wait statistics, blocking, deadlocks and logs.
  
• Tune execution plans, indexes, statistics, queries, waits, memory, CPU, I/O and workloads.
  
• Support database security, access, logins/users/roles, auditing, encryption awareness, vulnerability remediation and compliance.
  
• Troubleshoot availability, backup, transaction log, disk capacity, Agent job, connectivity and authentication incidents.
  
• Coordinate with application, infrastructure, backup, Windows/Unix, security, vendor and customer teams.
  
• Lead technical reviews, guide DBAs, perform peer reviews, allocate tasks and ensure SLA/standards adherence.
  
• Participate in incident, problem, request, change, release and knowledge management.
  
• Maintain runbooks, SOPs, architecture notes, implementation plans, DR evidence, RCA, release notes and knowledge articles.
  

Experience Required

• Good communication with customer stakeholders, application owners, infrastructure, security, DBAs and delivery leadership.
  
• Minimum 10–15 years of enterprise Microsoft SQL Server DBA production support experience.
  
• SQL Server 2016/2019/2022 or later, SSMS, SQL Agent, Always On, clustering and backup/recovery.
  
• Installation, configuration, patching, upgrades, migrations, refresh, tuning and monitoring.
  
• Windows Server, services, event logs, filesystem, permissions, PowerShell and deployment support.
  
• Mission-critical HA/DR, monitoring and 24x7 production support.
  
• T-SQL troubleshooting, execution plans, index/statistics tuning, waits, deadlocks, blocking, Query Store and resource management.
  
• Security, access controls, auditing, vulnerability remediation and compliance preferred.
  
• CommVault or enterprise backup platform experience preferred.
  
• Utility, regulated infrastructure, NERC CIP-adjacent, cloud readiness or managed services preferred.
  
• Ability to lead DBAs and deliver to SLA.
  

Technical Skills

• SQL Server 2016/2019/2022 or later: installation, configuration, upgrade, patching, migration, cloning and refresh.
  
• Always On Availability Groups, Failover Cluster Instances, log shipping, replication, mirroring, HA and DR.
  
• Backup/recovery, transaction log management, restore testing, point-in-time recovery and DR exercises.
  
• SSMS, SQL Agent, DMVs, Query Store, Extended Events, Profiler, counters and monitoring tools.
  
• T-SQL, stored procedures, functions, jobs, indexes, statistics, plans, waits, deadlocks/blocking and tuning.
  
• Windows Server DBA support, PowerShell, event logs, service accounts, storage and deployment.
  
• Database security, auditing, access management, encryption awareness and vulnerability remediation.
  
• Azure SQL, SQL Server on Azure VM, Azure Arc-enabled SQL Server, automation or cloud readiness preferred.
  
• ITIL and ServiceNow/Jira/BMC Remedy.
  
• Managed services, SLA reporting, RCA, runbooks, SOPs, audit evidence and knowledge management.