Senior Database Administrator

About the position

The Database Administrator (DBA) is responsible for managing and maintaining the credit union's database environments, ensuring high availability, security, and performance across all systems. They are responsible for monitoring and maintaining all SQL database systems within the organization, ensuring best practices are applied to system support, upgrades, and testing. This role involves managing and executing large IT projects and initiatives, with a heavy emphasis on maintaining current system functionality and implementing tools and processes that proactively prevent issues and improve performance.

Responsibilities

• Install, configure, and maintain SQL Server instances, ensuring database availability, reliability, and optimal performance.
• Monitor database performance, implement performance tuning, and resolve database-related issues, including deadlocks, slow queries, and indexing challenges.
• Manage database backup, restore procedures, and disaster recovery strategies to ensure business continuity.
• Implement and maintain security protocols for database access, including user permissions, role-based access control (RBAC), and encryption.
• Plan and execute database patching, upgrades, and migrations as necessary.
• Regularly analyze and optimize database storage, index management, and partitioning for improved performance and scalability.
• Automate routine database tasks, such as backups, monitoring, and performance reporting, to improve operational efficiency.
• Conduct capacity planning and make recommendations for hardware and storage upgrades based on anticipated growth.
• Ensure databases comply with industry regulations and standards, including data privacy laws (e.g., GDPR, CCPA) and financial industry regulations like NCUA rules & regulations, BSA, AMLA & Federal Credit union act.
• Implement and monitor security controls to protect sensitive member information and financial data, including encryption and data masking techniques.
• Perform regular security audits and vulnerability assessments on database systems and recommend necessary improvements.
• Work closely with application developers, system administrators, and business analysts to support database needs for various projects and applications.
• Assist in troubleshooting and resolving issues related to data access, database performance, and virtualization layer connectivity.
• Provide technical expertise and support to the IT team on database-related issues, acting as the subject matter expert on SQL Server and data virtualization.
• Help design and maintain efficient data structures to ensure fast query performance in reporting environments.
• Maintain comprehensive documentation of database configurations, standard operating procedures (SOPs), and recovery plans.
• Establish and enforce best practices for database administration, including coding standards, backup procedures, and database maintenance routines.

Requirements

• Bachelor's degree in Information Technology, or a related field, or equivalent work experience.
• 5+ years of hands-on experience in SQL Server database administration, including installation, configuration, tuning, and troubleshooting.
• Strong proficiency in SQL querying, performance tuning, and database optimization.
• Experience with database backup, restore, and disaster recovery planning.
• 5+ Years of hands-on experience with Microsoft Clustering Services.
• Familiarity with data security best practices and compliance requirements (e.g., encryption, RBAC, NCUA rules & regulations, BSA, AMLA & Federal Credit union act).
• Basic knowledge of Power BI, including understanding data flows and optimizing database connections for reporting.
• Strong problem-solving and troubleshooting skills, with a proactive approach to identifying and resolving database issues.

Nice-to-haves

• Experience in the financial services or credit union industry.
• Knowledge of cloud-based database platforms, such as Azure SQL Database or Amazon RDS.
• Experience with data virtualization, and data warehousing concepts.
• Hands-on experience with scripting and automation tools such as PowerShell, Python, or similar.