Note: The job is a remote job and is open to candidates in USA. Gallagher Bassett is a company dedicated to helping clients navigate complexity and deliver meaningful outcomes. They are seeking a Lead Database Administrator to provide technical leadership and operational excellence across their enterprise database ecosystem, focusing on SQL Server and cloud platforms.
Responsibilities
- Lead the administration, configuration, and ongoing support of enterprise Microsoft SQL Server environments across on-premises, hybrid, and cloud platforms
- Serve as the technical lead and escalation point for complex SQL Server issues, production incidents, performance concerns, and database platform decisions
- Provide technical leadership, coaching, mentoring, and knowledge transfer to DBA team members, application teams, and other IT operations resources
- Define and implement database standards, governance processes, architecture patterns, naming conventions, operational procedures, and best practices for enterprise database management
- Own and/or participate in in database capacity planning, lifecycle management, patching strategy, upgrade planning, and roadmap development
- Design, implement, and support highly available and resilient SQL Server architectures using Always On Availability Groups, Failover Clustering, replication, log shipping, backup/restore strategies, and cloud-native resiliency capabilities
- Develop, maintain, and regularly test disaster recovery and business continuity plans to meet established recovery time objectives (RTO) and recovery point objectives (RPO)
- Lead complex database migrations, consolidations, upgrades, cloud modernization initiatives, platform rationalization efforts, and decommissioning activities
- Manage and optimize cloud database platforms including Azure SQL Managed Instance, Azure SQL Database, SQL Server on Azure Virtual Machines and related cloud data services
- Evaluate, plan, and execute SQL Server modernization patterns including rehost, refactor, replatform, managed instance adoption, and cloud-native data service transitions
- Monitor and optimize database performance through advanced query tuning, index optimization, workload analysis, execution plan review, wait statistics analysis, resource governance, and automation
- Support and enhance Shadowbase replication technologies used to synchronize data between HPE NonStop and Microsoft SQL environments, including monitoring, troubleshooting, validation, and operational documentation
- Enhance proactive monitoring, alerting, observability, capacity forecasting, and health reporting processes to ensure database platform stability, scalability, and reliability
- Drive automation initiatives using AI, PowerShell, T-SQL, SQL Agent, automation frameworks, Infrastructure as Code concepts, workload automation, and enterprise scheduling tools
- Partner with application development, architecture, and data teams to establish data design standards, database development practices, and application performance optimization strategies
- Implement and maintain database security controls including least-privilege access, encryption at rest and in transit, auditing, privileged access management, vulnerability remediation, data retention, and regulatory compliance requirements
- Collaborate with cybersecurity, governance, risk, audit, and compliance teams to ensure adherence to enterprise policies, regulatory obligations, and industry standards
- Develop executive-level reporting and communicate database risks, operational health, modernization progress, resiliency posture, and strategic recommendations to IT leadership
- Create and maintain comprehensive database architecture, operational, security, monitoring, backup, recovery, and runbook documentation
- Contribute to vendor evaluations, licensing analysis, support escalations, cost optimization opportunities, and platform selection decisions related to SQL Server and cloud database services
- Participate in leadership-level planning for mergers, acquisitions, divestitures, data center initiatives, and enterprise transformation efforts when database platforms are impacted
- Participate in an on-call rotation supporting 24x7x365 business-critical operations by providing senior escalation coverage when needed
Skills
- Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, or a related field. Equivalent professional experience may be considered
- Minimum 8+ years of progressive database administration experience with at least 3 years serving in a senior, lead, or principal DBA capacity
- Expert-level knowledge of Microsoft SQL Server architecture, administration, troubleshooting, performance tuning, security, backup/recovery, and operational support
- Experience managing large-scale, highly available SQL Server environments supporting mission-critical applications in a 24x7x365 enterprise setting
- Strong hands-on experience with SQL Server Always On Availability Groups, Windows Server Failover Clustering, backup and recovery architecture, replication, log shipping, and disaster recovery testing
- Demonstrated experience with Azure SQL Managed Instance, Azure SQL Database, SQL Server on Azure Virtual Machines, Azure monitoring, Azure storage/recovery services, and cloud migration methodologies
- Deep understanding of SQL Server internals, T-SQL, execution plans, indexing strategies, query optimization, statistics, wait types, locking, blocking, deadlocks, tempdb optimization, and resource management
- Experience with Shadowbase or similar enterprise replication technologies; experience supporting HPE NonStop to SQL Server data synchronization is a plus
- Strong understanding of database security best practices including encryption, auditing, access controls, privileged access management, vulnerability management, data classification, and compliance support
- Experience automating repeatable DBA tasks, health checks, reporting, deployment support, and operational workflows
- Experience implementing monitoring, observability, alerting, capacity planning, and performance management solutions for enterprise database environments
- Strong project leadership, stakeholder management, vendor management, change management, and risk management skills
- Ability to lead multiple initiatives simultaneously, prioritize competing demands, and make sound decisions based on business impact, technical risk, and operational urgency
- Exceptional analytical, troubleshooting, and problem-solving capabilities with a structured approach to incident resolution and root cause analysis
- Excellent verbal and written communication skills with the ability to communicate effectively with technical teams, business stakeholders, auditors, vendors, and executive leadership
- Demonstrated ability to mentor technical staff, influence without direct authority, and establish credibility as a trusted database platform leader
- Typically requires a University Degree and minimum 7 years of prior relevant experience, or equivalent experience
- Typically requires a Bachelor's degree and 8+ years of experience in database administration, database architecture, and physical database design; equivalent professional experience may be substituted in lieu of education
- Prior enterprise-scale Microsoft SQL Server database administration experience is required
- Experience serving as a lead DBA, senior DBA, database platform owner, or technical escalation lead is required
- Experience leading database modernization, SQL Server upgrade, cloud migration, platform consolidation, or data center transformation initiatives is strongly preferred
- Hands-on experience with Azure SQL Managed Instance, Azure SQL Database, SQL Server on Azure Virtual Machines, and/or Amazon RDS for SQL Server is strongly preferred
- Microsoft certifications related to Azure, SQL Server, data platforms, cloud architecture, or security are preferred
- Strong working knowledge of project planning, project tracking, reporting, governance, change management, and operational readiness processes
- Familiarity and experience using workload automation, enterprise job scheduling, and operational orchestration software
- Experience supporting highly regulated, highly available 24x7x365 environments
- Experience working with cross-functional teams including application development, infrastructure, cybersecurity, architecture, compliance, audit, and business operations
Benefits
- Competitive compensation
- Comprehensive benefits programs designed to support your well-being
- Career development opportunities and ongoing learning
- A collaborative, people-first culture with accessible leadership
- The opportunity to do meaningful work with global reach and local impact
Company Overview