IT Database Administrator

About the role

We are seeking an experienced Azure Database Administrator to design, implement, secure, and optimize cloud database platforms supporting mission-critical applications for our associates and clients. The ideal candidate brings hands-on expertise across Azure SQL Database/Managed Instance, Azure Database for PostgreSQL, and Cosmos DB, with strong performance tuning, automation, and governance skills.

Responsibilities

Key responsibilities include:

• Administration and Operations: Provision, configure, and maintain Azure database services, manage backups, restores, disaster recovery, and geo-replication, and establish RPO/RTO targets and failover procedures/runbooks.
• Performance and Reliability: Conduct query optimization and tuning, optimize Cosmos DB partition keys, RU throughput, consistency levels, and indexing policies, and tune PostgreSQL settings and SQL Server configurations.
• Security, Compliance, and Governance: Implement least privilege access, RBAC/ABAC, and Managed Identities, enforce encryption in transit and at rest, and maintain compliance with relevant industry standards and internal governance.
• Automation and DevOps: Automate administrative tasks using PowerShell, Azure CLI, and scripting, implement infrastructure-as-code for database provisioning and configuration, and integrate database changes into CI/CD pipelines.
• Data Lifecycle and Migrations: Plan and execute migrations between on-prem and Azure or across Azure services, validate data integrity and performance post-migration, and document data retention policies, archival strategies, and lifecycle management.
• Incident Response and Support: Troubleshoot production issues, perform root cause analysis, and implement permanent fixes, create clear operational documentation, runbooks, and knowledge base articles.
• Collaboration and Stakeholder Engagement: Partner with application development, SRE, architecture, security, and platform teams to deliver stable, scalable solutions for our clients, advise on schema design, data modeling, and capacity planning.

Requirements

Required qualifications include:

• 5+ years of hands-on database administration experience, including SQL Server, PostgreSQL, and Cosmos DB.
• Strong Azure expertise: Azure Monitor, Log Analytics, Alerts, Key Vault, Private Link, VNets, RBAC, Managed Identities, Defender for Cloud.
• Proficiency with scripting and automation: PowerShell and Azure CLI (Python/Bash a plus).
• Experience with infrastructure-as-code (Bicep/ARM/Terraform) and CI/CD integration (Azure DevOps/GitHub).
• Proven track record in security hardening, auditing, and compliance-oriented database management.
• Solid understanding of networking concepts impacting databases (latency, bandwidth, DNS, private endpoints).

Preferred qualifications include experience with hybrid environments, AKS or containerized workloads, data governance, retention, and archival strategies, streaming and integration patterns, and highly regulated environments.

Qualifications

Educational requirements include a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, or related field; or equivalent experience. Microsoft Certified: Azure Database Administrator Associate (DP-300) strongly preferred, with other certifications such as Azure Fundamentals (AZ-900), Azure Solutions Architect (AZ-305), MongoDB Certified DBA, PostgreSQL certifications, and Redis certification also advantageous.

Skills

Core competencies include ownership, accountability, and a bias for automation, clear written and verbal communication, strong analytical and problem-solving skills, and collaboration and stakeholder management.

Benefits

Benefit highlights include medical with wellness incentives, dental, and vision, HSA with company match, maternity and parental leave, tuition reimbursement, mentor program, and 401(k) with 6% match.

Work Environment

The work environment is on site in Memphis, Tennessee, or in the First Horizon footprint, with after-hours support for deployments, DR tests, and incident response.