Senior Database Administrator

RIVO Holdings, LLC•San Diego, CA

2d•$160,000 - $200,000•Onsite

About The Position

RIVO is seeking an experienced Senior Database Administrator to own the design, performance, and reliability of its Microsoft Azure SQL database environment. The role is a hands-on engineering and strategic architecture position responsible for the organization’s database architecture end to end, including data modeling, performance, security, availability, and data pipelines. The successful candidate will help transform legacy database structures into a scalable, high-performing platform built for the future. The position owns Azure SQL architecture and capacity strategy; designs data models and schemas; modernizes legacy databases, stored procedures, and access patterns; and establishes database development standards. It also covers performance diagnosis and optimization, operational reliability, security, automation, cost management, and data integration. The Senior Database Administrator partners with Engineering, Product, and Analytics teams to translate business requirements into scalable database solutions and advise on architecture, performance, and data governance. This is a fully on-site role; hybrid and remote work are not available. RIVO is unable to sponsor or take over sponsorship of an employment visa at this time. The stated salary range is $160,000 to $200,000 per year, with individual compensation determined by factors including education, experience, training, certifications, knowledge, skills, and business needs.

Requirements

At least 8 years of experience as a DBA, Database Engineer, or Database Developer in Microsoft SQL Server environments, including at least 3 years with Azure SQL Database.
Deep expertise in relational modeling, normalization, and schema design, and in architecting databases for scale, availability, and maintainability.
Advanced T-SQL skills and a proven track record tuning queries and workloads using execution plans, Query Store, DMVs, indexing, partitioning, and statistics.
Hands-on experience with backup and restore, geo-replication, access control, encryption, and auditing.
Experience building ETL/ELT pipelines using Azure Data Factory, SSIS, or similar tools, as well as CDC and incremental processing.
Experience with database CI/CD and scripting.

Nice To Haves

Experience designing enterprise data warehouses using dimensional modeling, including Star Schema, Snowflake Schema, fact tables, and dimension tables.
Experience with Microsoft Fabric, Azure Synapse, Databricks, Azure Data Lake Storage, or lakehouse architectures.
Experience supporting Power BI, Tableau, semantic models, and self-service reporting.
Experience supporting low-latency data environments and machine-learning pipelines.
Experience with data classification, lineage, and retention, such as Microsoft Purview.
Microsoft Certified: Azure Database Administrator Associate (DP-300) certification or equivalent.

Responsibilities

Own the architecture of the Azure SQL environment, including Azure SQL Databases, service tiers, and capacity strategy.
Design scalable data models and schemas for new and existing applications.
Assess and modernize legacy database structures, stored procedures, and data access patterns.
Define database development standards, naming conventions, and code review practices.
Diagnose and resolve performance bottlenecks using execution plans, Query Store, and Extended Events.
Design and maintain indexing, partitioning, and statistics strategies.
Optimize T-SQL, stored procedures, and application queries in partnership with developers.
Proactively monitor workloads, blocking, deadlocks, and resource utilization.
Own backup, restore, high availability, and disaster recovery, including point-in-time restore, geo-replication, and failover groups.
Implement database security, including Entra ID authentication, role-based access, encryption, and auditing, to protect PII data.
Automate schema changes, deployments, and maintenance.
Manage Azure database costs, scaling, and capacity planning.
Build and maintain ETL/ELT pipelines using Azure Data Factory, SSIS, or similar tools.
Design CDC and incremental load strategies for reliable movement of data between systems.
Establish data quality, reconciliation, and monitoring processes.
Partner with Engineering, Product, and Analytics teams to define data requirements and priorities.
Translate business needs into scalable database solutions.
Advise on database architecture, performance, and data governance.