We are seeking a hands-on Database Administrator for a remote contract engagement supporting high-availability operational database systems behind a large, high-traffic website. The role focuses on database reliability, security, disaster recovery, performance analysis, and close partnership with engineering teams.
Enterprise experience strongly preferred.
Key Responsibilities
- Maintain high availability and strong performance across production database systems.
- Plan, test, and carry out disaster recovery procedures with a zero-data-loss objective.
- Maintain database security, access controls, and adherence to security protocols.
- Analyze and tune database performance and diagnose difficult production performance issues.
- Work closely with engineers on requirements gathering, system design, design reviews, performance tuning, and technical support.
- Administer operational data systems in a highly technical production environment.
- Deliver reliable work under tight deadlines and remain composed during high-pressure incidents.
Must-Have Skills
- Approximately 3 to 4 years of hands-on database administration experience.
- Experience with both Microsoft SQL Server and Aurora PostgreSQL; deeper expertise in either platform is acceptable.
- Hands-on AWS experience, particularly Amazon RDS and Amazon Aurora.
- Programming experience with PowerShell or Python.
- Experience with Infrastructure as Code tools such as Terraform.
- Experience administering and troubleshooting Confluent Kafka.
- Extensive experience with database performance analysis and tuning.
- Experience administering high-function, high-availability production systems.
- Experience planning or performing disaster recovery.
- Strong ability to diagnose difficult database performance issues.
- Experience working closely with engineering teams through requirements gathering, design reviews, technical support, and deadline-driven delivery.
- Experience with database access control and security practices.
Nice-to-Have Skills
- Experience building Kafka connectors and topics.
- Experience with NoSQL databases such as MongoDB.
- Experience with Snowflake.
- Experience with other relational databases such as MySQL.
- Advanced Kafka experience, including KSQL and Flink.
Required Tools & Platforms
- Microsoft SQL Server and Aurora PostgreSQL.
- AWS, Amazon RDS, and Amazon Aurora.
- PowerShell or Python.
- Terraform or comparable Infrastructure as Code tooling.
- Confluent Kafka.
Location, Time & Engagement
- Candidates must be based in an eligible Latin American country.
- Central Time working hours are preferred.
- Remote contract engagement, 40 hours per week.
- Expected engagement through March 31, 2027; start date to be agreed.
- One opening is available.
- This is not currently a contract-to-hire opportunity.
- Before client submission, viable candidates must complete the Amazon WorkSpaces Health connectivity test and provide a screenshot showing good connectivity to an AWS WorkSpace region.