Senior Database Administrator

TAXWELL•Haverford, PA

About The Position

Taxwell helps everyday Americans get every tax advantage they deserve by finding credits and deductions they never even knew existed. Our tax preparation software offers easy guidance and ensures your maximum tax refund. We strive to build a team of like-minded experts in both tax and technology who align with our brand purpose, are advocates for our customers and have a fresh, non-traditional approach to the tax industry. Drake Software is a leading digital tax filing platform which offers customers professional digital and downloadable products that are easy-to-use, best-in-class technology, and provide unparalleled customer support. We are a trusted solution for all users including those with complex tax returns. We strive to attract and retain candidates who exemplify our values: performance, perseverance, progress and partnership. Drake Software is a member of the Taxwell family of products. We are an organization of forward thinkers looking to add industry experts to our growing team. As the Senior Database Administrator, you will be Taxwell’s top technical authority on database operations, performance, security, and platform strategy. This role blends senior-level operational responsibility with platform-level decision-making. You will oversee the reliability and performance of our database ecosystem—spanning Microsoft SQL Server, PostgreSQL, and DynamoDB deployed across AWS RDS, EC2, and integrated into a microservices architecture running on EKS, Lambda, ECS, and EC2. This role is critical to ensuring stable, secure, and high-performance data systems across extreme seasonal workload spikes up to 100x traffic during peak tax season. You will collaborate closely with SRE, Software Engineering, Data Engineering & Analytics, Cloud Platform, and Architecture teams to advance observability, automation, and operational excellence. We are embracing AI-assisted observability and RCA tooling, and this Senior DBA will help lead adoption of AI-driven database insights, anomaly detection, and performance recommendations.

Requirements

8+ years of experience in database administration, engineering, or architecture roles.
Deep expertise with Microsoft SQL Server (performance tuning, high availability, indexing, query optimization).
Production experience with PostgreSQL and DynamoDB.
Strong experience with AWS database services including RDS and SQL Server on EC2.
Proficiency in T-SQL, PowerShell, and Bash for automation.
Experience supporting high-scale, mission-critical environments.
Familiarity with IaC (CloudFormation, Terraform) with ability to review DB IaC changes.
Experience with Datadog or similar observability platforms.
Excellent communication and collaboration skills.
Strong analytical and diagnostic abilities with a data-driven mindset.
Ability to thrive in fast-paced environments with seasonal workload spikes.
High ownership, accountability, and urgency.
Experience mentoring and elevating other team members.

Nice To Haves

Experience with AI-assisted database insight or performance tooling.
Exposure to EKS-based microservices environments.
Experience contributing to SLO/SLI definitions for database services.

Responsibilities

Database Platform Ownership • Own the end-to-end health, performance, availability, and scalability of SQL Server, PostgreSQL, and DynamoDB databases across AWS environments.
Lead the evolution of Taxwell’s database platform architecture, standards, and operational practices.
Identify and implement improvements that enhance performance and reliability, especially for seasonal high-volume workloads.
Operational Excellence & Performance • Perform advanced performance tuning through execution plan analysis, indexing strategies, and optimization techniques.
Refine and manage backup/restore processes to meet strict RPO/RTO requirements.
Build and maintain Datadog-based DB observability dashboards and alerts in alignment with SRE.
Participate in on-call rotations and lead triage of database-related incidents, including contributing to blameless RCAs.
Engineering Collaboration • Partner with SRE, Software Engineering, Data Engineering & Analytics, and Architecture teams to ensure database best practices are integrated into application and data pipelines.
Review and deploy database change scripts from internal development teams and third-party vendors.
Provide guidance during architectural reviews, schema design, and performance modeling for new features.
Automation & Scripting • Develop automation using T-SQL, PowerShell, and Bash to streamline operations, baseline performance, validate system health, and support observability.
Implement automated integrity checks, failover validation, and performance baselining.
Platform Modernization & IaC • Contribute to and review database Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC) definitions using CloudFormation and Terraform.
Support modernization as Taxwell evolves its data platform and migrates legacy systems to more scalable architectures.
Security, Compliance, and Governance • Implement and audit database security controls, encryption, access management, and compliance requirements.
Ensure adherence to best practices for data integrity, retention, auditing, and access control.
Mentorship & Leadership • Serve as the senior-most technical DBA, mentoring junior DBAs and guiding engineers in database best practices.
Lead cross-team initiatives to improve reliability, scalability, automation, and data quality.