Senior Engineer, Database Administration

Guardian Life Insurance•Holmdel Township, NJ

3d•$99,150 - $162,885

About The Position

We are seeking a highly skilled and experienced Senior MS SQL Database Engineer to lead the design, architecture, governance, and operational support of enterprise database platforms. This role combines strategic architecture responsibilities with deep hands-on database administration expertise, ensuring highly available, performant, secure, and resilient SQL Server environments across on-premises and cloud platforms. The ideal candidate will serve as the technical leader for SQL Server technologies, drive database modernization initiatives, establish architecture standards, and provide operational support for mission-critical applications. This individual will partner with application teams, infrastructure teams, cloud engineering, security, and business stakeholders to design scalable database solutions while maintaining operational excellence.

Requirements

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, Engineering, or related field.
10+ years of Microsoft SQL Server administration experience.
5+ years of enterprise database architecture experience.
Expert knowledge of: SQL Server 2019, 2022 and 2025, Always On Availability Groups, SQL Server Clustering, Replication, Backup and Recovery, Performance Tuning, Security and Compliance
Deep understanding of SQL Server storage engine internals.
Strong T-SQL development and query optimization skills.
Experience with SSIS, SSRS, and SQL Server Management Studio.
Extensive PowerShell scripting and automation experience.
Strong knowledge of SDLC, DevOps, and Change Management processes.
Experience supporting large-scale, business-critical database environments.
Excellent troubleshooting and problem-solving skills.
Strong written and verbal communication skills.

Nice To Haves

Experience with AWS services including: RDS, EC2, Aurora, CloudWatch, CloudTrail
Experience with Terraform, GitHub, Bitbucket, Jenkins, or other CI/CD platforms.
Knowledge of containerized database deployments and Kubernetes.
Experience with database observability tools such as Foglight and Zenoss.

Responsibilities

Define and maintain enterprise SQL Server architecture standards and best practices.
Design scalable, secure, and highly available database solutions supporting critical business applications.
Lead database modernization initiatives, including cloud adoption, migration, and platform transformation.
Develop architecture roadmaps for SQL Server, AWS SQL, AWS RDS SQL Server, and related technologies.
Evaluate emerging database technologies and recommend strategic investments.
Establish standards for High Availability (HA), Disaster Recovery (DR), backup, recovery, monitoring, and automation.
Review application database designs and provide guidance on data modeling, indexing strategies, scalability, and performance.
Perform installation, configuration, patching, upgrading, and maintenance of Microsoft SQL Server environments.
Administer SQL Server Always On Availability Groups, Failover Cluster Instances, Replication, Log Shipping, and Disaster Recovery solutions.
Manage database security, auditing, encryption, and compliance requirements.
Execute backup, recovery, refresh, migration, and upgrade activities.
Support production, development, test, and disaster recovery environments.
Monitor database health, capacity, availability, and performance.
Diagnose and resolve complex database performance issues.
Conduct SQL query tuning and optimization.
Analyze execution plans, indexing strategies, resource utilization, and workload patterns.
Develop proactive monitoring and automated remediation solutions.
Perform capacity planning and growth forecasting.
Architect and support SQL Server solutions within AWS and hybrid cloud environments.
Lead migrations from on-premises SQL Server to AWS RDS, EC2, and cloud-native platforms.
Develop Infrastructure-as-Code solutions utilizing Terraform and CI/CD pipelines.
Create automation solutions using PowerShell, SQL scripts, and orchestration tools.
Implement self-healing and operational automation capabilities.
Serve as the technical authority for SQL Server within the organization.
Mentor and develop junior DBAs and Database Engineers.
Establish governance processes, architecture reviews, and technical standards.
Participate in incident response and major outage management.
Collaborate with application development teams on database design and deployment strategies.
Provide technical leadership during audits, compliance reviews, and business continuity exercises.