Database Administrator Role

OpenDataJobs•Washington, DC

23d

About The Position

Database Administrators keep database services available, recoverable, secure, observable, and appropriately sized. They manage the operational conditions under which database code and data run, including configuration, capacity, backups, upgrades, replication, and incident response. The role includes establishing recovery procedures, testing restores and failover, monitoring workload health, investigating contention and resource pressure, coordinating patches, and administering privileged access. Performance work is evidence-based, connecting application behavior, query plans, configuration, data growth, and infrastructure signals before production changes are made. Managed database services automate parts of installation, patching, backups, scaling, and high availability, but operational ownership remains. Database Administrators set policy, configure services, validate recovery, tune workloads, manage access, plan version upgrades, interpret monitoring, and respond when service behavior does not match expectations. Potential work includes developing monitoring, alerting, health checks, capacity forecasts, operational dashboards, backup and disaster-recovery procedures, configuration baselines, maintenance automation, patch plans, upgrade runbooks, privileged-access controls, encryption configurations, audit support, and performance remediation plans. The role calls for a methodical approach during normal operations and a steady response during incidents. Database Administrators prepare for failures, maintain current operational evidence, make careful production changes, communicate risks and service impacts, and collaborate with developers, architects, security teams, cloud platform teams, and service owners. They use automation for repeatable tasks and human review where appropriate. Specific future openings may require particular database engines or managed services, such as PostgreSQL, Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle Database, Amazon Relational Database Service, or Azure SQL. Operational responsibilities may vary between self-managed and platform-managed services. AI-supporting workloads may introduce database characteristics such as vector indexes, bursty retrieval traffic, new retention patterns, or sensitive interaction data; securing, monitoring, tuning, and recovering those workloads is within database operations, while model operations, AI evaluation, and AI-specific controls are outside the role's core ownership. Compensation, benefits, work location, and employment terms are set for each specific opening and will be stated with that opening.

Requirements

Production administration experience with one or more relational database engines or managed database services.
Hands-on knowledge of monitoring, performance diagnosis, capacity management, backups, restores, replication, and high availability.
Experience planning patches, major-version upgrades, maintenance windows, rollback paths, and disaster-recovery tests.
Understanding of database access control, privileged operations, encryption, audit needs, and security hardening.
Scripting or automation skills for repeatable maintenance, evidence collection, health checks, and operational response.
Methodical preparation for failures and maintenance of current operational evidence.
Ability to make careful production changes and clearly communicate risk and service impact.
Ability to collaborate with developers, architects, security teams, cloud platform teams, and service owners.

Responsibilities

Keep database services available, recoverable, secure, observable, and appropriately sized.
Manage database configuration, capacity, backups, upgrades, replication, and incident response.
Establish recovery procedures and test restores and failover.
Monitor workload health and investigate contention and resource pressure.
Coordinate patches and administer privileged access.
Analyze application behavior, query plans, configuration, data growth, and infrastructure signals before making production performance changes.
Set policy and configure managed database services; validate recovery, tune workloads, manage access, plan version upgrades, interpret monitoring, and respond to unexpected service behavior.
Develop monitoring, alerting, health checks, capacity forecasts, and operational dashboards.
Create and test backup, restore, replication, failover, and disaster-recovery procedures, maintaining evidence of testing.
Establish database configuration baselines, maintenance automation, patch plans, and upgrade runbooks.
Manage privileged-access controls, role administration, encryption configurations, and audit support.
Investigate and remediate performance issues across queries, indexes, configuration, storage, and compute.
Plan patches, major-version upgrades, maintenance windows, rollback paths, and disaster-recovery tests.
Use scripting or automation for repeatable maintenance, evidence collection, health checks, and operational response.
Communicate risks and service impacts, collaborate with relevant technical and service teams, and apply human review when needed.
For AI-supporting workloads, secure, monitor, tune, and recover database workload characteristics; model operations and AI evaluation are outside the core ownership.