Database Administrator Sr Principal

General Dynamics Information Technology•USA NC Home Office (NCHOME), NC

1d•Remote

About The Position

Advance how our customers operate while you advance your career. Join GDIT as a Database Administrator Sr Principal and build an impactful career in enterprise IT, collaborating with people who are driven and resourceful like you. MEANINGFUL WORK AND PERSONAL IMPACT We’re seeking a seasoned Senior Database Administrator (DBA) for the NCMMIS program with deep expertise in IBM Mainframe (z/OS), Db2 (z/OS and LUW), Microsoft SQL Server, PostgreSQL, and AWS Cloud services. In this role, you’ll own the reliability, performance, security, and modernization of mission-critical data platforms across on‑prem, mainframe, and cloud. You’ll lead complex migrations, optimize large-scale databases, automate operations, and partner closely with application, security, and infrastructure teams to deliver resilient, compliant, and cost‑effective data services.

Requirements

8–12+ years of progressive DBA experience across Db2 (z/OS & LUW), SQL Server, and PostgreSQL, including production ownership in enterprise environments.
Hands-on mainframe experience: TSO/ISPF, JCL, Linux, Db2 utilities, and performance analysis using SMF/IFC data and Db2 traces.
Proven AWS experience running databases on RDS/Aurora and EC2, with strong knowledge of networking, storage, IAM, and monitoring (CloudWatch).
Expert-level performance tuning and query optimization; adept with execution plans, indexing, partitioning, and statistics maintenance.
Strong command of backup/restore, replication, HA/DR, and business continuity across on‑prem and cloud.
Practical automation skills with PowerShell, Python, Bash, and mainframe scripting (REXX, JCL).
Solid grasp of security, compliance, and audit practices; experience with encryption, RBAC, auditing, and key management.
Excellent communication, stakeholder management, and incident leadership under pressure.

Nice To Haves

Certifications: AWS Certified Database – Specialty, AWS SysOps Administrator, AWS Certified Data Engineer - Associate, IBM Db2 certifications, Microsoft DP-300 (Administering Relational Databases on Microsoft Azure), PostgreSQL Professional.
Experience with modern data ecosystems (e.g., Kafka, Snowflake, Redshift) and ETL/ELT tooling (e.g., Informatica, dbt, SSIS, AWS Glue).
Experience with Observability tooling (e.g., CloudWatch, Grafana/Prometheus, Datadog, Dynatrace, Idera, Redgate).
Familiarity with ITIL, Agile, and DevOps practices; prior work enabling database change automation and release governance.

Responsibilities

Administer, configure, and maintain databases across Db2 for z/OS, Db2 LUW, SQL Server, PostgreSQL, and AWS (e.g., RDS/Aurora, EC2-based instances, CloudWatch/Config, and backup/DR services).
Manage schema design, indexing strategies, data partitioning, compression, and workload management for high-throughput transactional and analytical systems.
Implement and verify backup/restore, HA/DR, log shipping, replication, and failover strategies (native tools and third-party solutions).
Perform capacity planning and cost optimization (licenses, storage tiers, IOPS, instance sizing), including AWS cost controls and reservations.
Conduct deep performance tuning: query optimization, execution plans, parallelism, memory, I/O, buffer pools, and connection management.
Proactively remediate bottlenecks using profilers, DMVs, EXPLAIN/EXPLAIN ANALYZE, Db2 accounting traces, z/OS SMF data, and cloud metrics.
Establish SLOs/SLAs, observability dashboards, and alerting for availability, latency, and error budgets.
Enforce security baselines: encryption (at rest/in transit), secrets management, key rotation (KMS/HSM), RACF/TSS for mainframe, least-privilege roles, and auditing.
Support compliance requirements (e.g., SOX, PCI DSS, HIPAA, GDPR) with robust access controls, data masking, logging, and evidence for audits.
Partner with InfoSec on vulnerability remediation, patching cadence, and incident response.
Build infrastructure-as-code patterns for database provisioning and configuration (e.g., Terraform, CloudFormation, Ansible).
Automate routine operations using PowerShell, Python, Bash, REXX/JCL (for z/OS), including jobs for checks, patching, and reporting.
Lead data migrations and modernization initiatives (e.g., mainframe offload, heterogeneous migrations, schema conversions, and refactoring for cloud-native services).
Collaborate with engineering to enable CI/CD for database changes, versioning, and repeatable deployments (e.g., Redgate, Liquibase, Flyway).
Serve as a subject matter expert for architecture reviews, capacity assessments, and database design guidance.
Mentor junior DBAs/engineers; establish best practices, runbooks, and knowledge bases.
Coordinate vendor engagements and manage licensing/commercial considerations.