Lead Database Administrator

Job Description

Job Description

About defi SOLUTIONS:

It’s an exciting time to join defi!

defi SOLUTIONS is a pioneer in end-to-end, SaaS loan originations, servicing, and managed servicing solutions. Our customers include the highest-volume captive auto lenders, banks, credit unions, and finance companies in North America. We have more than three decades of experience helping lenders reduce time-to-market, streamline operations, and customize lending processes with proven, scalable performance. Learn more at defisolutions.com and follow us on LinkedIn.

Position Purpose :

The Lead Database Administrator is responsible for managing all operational aspects of production and non-production database environments across multiple data centers supporting defi SOLUTIONS. This role oversees daily database performance, backups, tuning, patching, and overall maintenance of all database systems.

You will collaborate with operational and engineering teams to define requirements, architect solutions, and deliver reliable database services. Additionally, you’ll work closely with Client Services, Relationship Management, and various development and technical teams to ensure the operational needs of both clients and internal users are consistently met.

This is a multifaceted role requiring strong communication, leadership, and technical expertise to maintain high availability, performance, and security across all database platforms. Participation with On-Call is a critical aspect of this role, ensuring 24/7 support and rapid response to production issues or outages.

Essential functions:

Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform these essential functions.

• Setup, configure and manage SQL Server Always On Availability Groups on virtual machines.
• Primary responsibilities include installation, configuration, security management, patching, upgrades, backups, restores, environment refreshes, performance tuning, routine maintenance, disaster recovery planning and alerting/monitoring.
• Support ongoing database maintenance tasks, many of which must be completed within defined maintenance windows to ensure system availability and compliance.
• Support both Azure and AWS SQL Enviornments
• Interact with clients, analysts, and other team members to resolve issues.
• Assist less experienced team members and assist in problem resolution as necessary.
• Critical On-Call support to participate in incident and problem management processes and provide support as needed to ensure system reliability and timely issue resolution.
• Stay Current on emerging technologies
• Collaborate with other members of the Operations Team to design and implement solutions
• Open and Escalate cases with Microsoft when required

** Please note this job description is not designed to cover or contain a comprehensive listing of activities, duties or responsibilities that are required of the employee for this job. Duties, responsibilities, and activities may change at any time with or without notice.

Required education and experience:

• Bachelor’s degree or equivalent work experience
• 10+ years’ experience in an IT operations environment performing database administration.
• 3+ years of experience with Azure portal and all topics in Azure related to database maintenance including SQLMI and AzureSQL with failover groups as well as Azure CLI
• 3+ years of experience with AWS portal including CLI, S3, EC2, EBS and infrastructure knowledge
• 3+ years of experience with SQL Server Always On Availability Groups
• PowerShell Scripting experience
• Deep knowledge of SQL internal functionality including but not limited to
  • Query Processing and Optimization
    • Reading and Analyzing Execution plans, table statistics, data distribution and execution times
  • Indexing Mechanisms
    • Types, Maintenance and impact
  • Transaction Management
    • Isolation levels, Locking mechanisms, deadlocks, etc.
  • Storage Architecture
    • Data Pages, filegroups, row/page compression, etc.
    • Expert in large database design (logical, physical, conceptual) for OLTP and data warehouse environments using the Microsoft platform.
  • Backup and Recovery
    • Backup types, Recovery Models, PITR, Disaster Recovery Planning, etc.
    • Experience with maintaining high availability SQL environments and Disaster Recovery Strategies.
  • Security and Access Control
    • Authentication, Encryption, auditing, access requirements, etc.
  • Monitoring and Performance Tuning
    • Wait Statistics, Dynamic Management Views, Query Store, etc.
    • Experience with Datadog, Elastic or New Relic
  • Maintenance and Housekeeping
    • Database Consistency checks, statistics updates, index maintenance, log file management.
    • Experience using SQL Server Agent to develop and schedule administration jobs, alerts and groups.
• Effective analytical, communication, interpersonal and problem-solving skills.
• No management experience is required.

Preferred education and experience:

• Knowledge in Snowflake Administration
• Knowledge and experience working on Azure Cloud, Azure SQL and SQL Managed Instance is a plus
• Knowledge in Azure resources such as Storage Accounts, Blob Storage, Keyvault, Azure Active Directory

Additional eligibility requirements:

• An achiever, self-starter, and eager to learn
• You’ll have a proven track record of results as we’ll expect you to act decisively, think big, and manage your time and your team’s time to meet deadlines in a fast-paced, high-volume environment.
• Most importantly, you’ll want to contribute to a diverse, supportive, and talented team.

Travel required:

• Travel is potential to be 10% of time

Affirmative Action/EEO statement:

defi SOLUTIONS is an Equal Opportunity employer and all qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, disability or protected veteran status.