Database Administrator (DBA) / Database Engineer

About the role

CalAmp’s K-12 transportation platform tracks the buses that move ~1 million students every school day across 400+ North American school districts. We run Microsoft SQL Server self-hosted on AWS EC2 — 9 production instances, 600+ customer databases, more than a billion rows of operational data, and growing. (An eventual move to AWS RDS is on the table as a future direction, not a near-term plan.) We’re hiring a hands-on Database Engineer with strong production experience who is ready to grow into architecture, automation, and modern engineering practices.

Responsibilities

• Performance — the daily craft. Diagnose and fix slow queries, plan regressions, and locking storms across 9 SQL Server instances supporting customer-facing operations. You’ll inherit a decade of accumulated SQL — your first 90 days are about understanding it before re-architecting it.
• Reporting replica architecture. Separate analytical workload from operational SQL Server before it costs customer SLAs. Lead the design — likely AWS DMS feeding a multi-tenant Aurora PostgreSQL store, but the call is yours after scoping. This is a flagship project, not a maintenance task.
• Archival. Define and automate a sound data retention strategy across 600+ customer DBs that doesn’t degrade restore-from-backup integrity.
• AWS cost optimization. Identify savings opportunities in SQL Server EE licensing on EC2 — edition choice, reserved instances, right-sizing, replica strategy.
• Schema migrations and ETL. Automate and de-risk the schema-change process across all customer DBs, moving from a partially manual process to a reliable, low-risk system.
• Database subject-matter expert for engineering. Review every schema change from developers before it ships, providing actionable design insight. Profile and optimize queries and stored procedures alongside engineers, ensuring scalability in design reviews.
• On-call rotation. Participate in a light on-call schedule (once every five weeks, 6 AM to 11 PM Eastern) with a focus on reducing paging events over time.

We use AI tools across the development lifecycle — including query analysis, schema changes, runbook authoring, and operational workflows. Our engineers integrate AI (e.g., Claude Code) to improve speed and quality, and we expect the same for database work. We value candidates open to rethinking their craft with AI.

Requirements

• 4–8 years of hands-on DBA / Database Engineering experience, with a meaningful share on SQL Server.
• Database SME mindset — experience reviewing engineering schema changes, contributing design insight in code/architecture reviews, and partnering with developers (not gatekeeping).
• PostgreSQL proficiency — or willingness to develop it (aligned to future reporting architecture).
• Cloud database experience on AWS — self-hosted SQL Server on EC2 today; RDS familiarity is a plus given a possible future migration.
• Performance tuning track record — ability to discuss specific queries you fixed and how.
• Strong SQL: query writing, plan reading, index design, locking and isolation.
• Comfort scripting in Python or PowerShell for automation.
• Experience with both Linux and Windows.
• HA / replication topologies (Always On, log shipping, transactional).
• Strong written communication — ability to write proposals and defend them in an opinionated engineering team.
• Bachelor’s in CS, Information Systems, or equivalent practical track.

Nice to have

• Multi-tenant SaaS data architectures (per-customer databases or shared schemas).
• AWS DMS or other CDC replication experience.
• Aurora PostgreSQL.
• AWS cost optimization (Reserved Instances, Savings Plans, sizing).
• Datadog, Dynatrace, or similar APM tools.
• Experience using AI-assisted development tools.
• Background in operationally-critical SaaS (transportation, healthcare, finance).

What we don’t expect: K-12 domain experience, MongoDB, or IoT background. We value curiosity and will teach the domain.

Pay

Market Minimum USD $92,509.00/Yr. Market Maximum USD $158,587.00/Yr.

Logistics

Applicants must be legally authorized to work in the US on a permanent basis. We are unable to sponsor at this time.