Senior Sql Database Administrator

Role: SQL Database Administrator

Location: Vancouver, BC – Day 1 Onsite

Job Description

The person will lead Microsoft SQL Server database administration, production support, operational governance and database service delivery. 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.