Database Administrator (DBA) / Database Engineer

CalAmp•Detroit, MI

2d•$92,509 - $158,587•Remote

About The Position

CalAmp’s K-12 transportation platform tracks the buses that move ~1 million students every school day across 400+ North American school districts. We run Microsoft SQL Server self-hosted on AWS EC2 — 9 production instances, 600+ customer databases, more than a billion rows of operational data, and growing. An eventual move to AWS RDS is on the table as a future direction, not a near-term plan. We’re hiring a hands-on Database Engineer with strong production experience who is ready to grow into architecture, automation, and modern engineering practices.

Requirements

4–8 years of hands-on DBA / Database Engineering experience, with a meaningful share on SQL Server.
Database SME mindset: experience reviewing engineering schema changes, contributing design insight in code/architecture reviews, and partnering with developers.
PostgreSQL proficiency or willingness to develop it.
Cloud database experience on AWS, specifically self-hosted SQL Server on EC2.
Performance tuning track record, with the ability to discuss specific query fixes.
Strong SQL skills: query writing, plan reading, index design, locking and isolation.
Comfort scripting in Python or PowerShell for automation.
Experience with both Linux and Windows operating systems.
Familiarity with HA / replication topologies (Always On, log shipping, transactional).
Strong written communication skills for proposals and defense of ideas.
Bachelor’s in CS, Information Systems, or equivalent practical track.
Legally authorized to work in the US on a permanent basis.

Nice To Haves

Familiarity with AWS RDS.
Multi-tenant SaaS data architectures (per-customer databases or shared schemas).
AWS DMS or other CDC replication experience.
Aurora PostgreSQL experience.
AWS cost optimization (Reserved Instances, Savings Plans, sizing).
Experience with Datadog, Dynatrace, or similar APM tools.
Experience using AI-assisted development tools.
Background in operationally-critical SaaS (transportation, healthcare, finance).

Responsibilities

Diagnose and fix slow queries, plan regressions, and locking storms across 9 SQL Server instances supporting customer-facing operations.
Lead the design for separating analytical workload from operational SQL Server, likely involving AWS DMS feeding a multi-tenant Aurora PostgreSQL store.
Define and own the automation for a sound data retention strategy across 600+ customer DBs that doesn’t degrade restore-from-backup integrity.
Identify measurable savings in SQL Server EE licensing on EC2 through edition choice, reserved instances, right-sizing, and replica strategy.
Automate, make reliable, and reduce risk in the schema-change process across all customer DBs.
Act as the database subject-matter expert for engineering, reviewing schema changes, providing actionable design insight, and profiling/optimizing queries and stored procedures with developers.
Participate in an on-call rotation once every five weeks, with on-call hours from 6 AM to 11 PM Eastern, aiming to reduce paging events.
Utilize AI tools across the development lifecycle for tasks such as query analysis, schema changes, runbook authoring, and operational workflows.