Technical Lead - SQL DBA, SQL Server & Database Administration

Technical Lead - SQL DBA, SQL Server & Database Administration

Experience Required: 10-15 Years

Roles and Responsibilities:

The person will be responsible for leading Microsoft SQL Server database administration, production support, operational governance and database service delivery. The role requires strong hands-on SQL DBA expertise, technical leadership, troubleshooting capability, database availability management, performance tuning, backup and recovery governance, and coordination with application, infrastructure, security, compliance and vendor teams.

Key Accountabilities:

• Lead end-to-end SQL Server DBA operations, technical delivery and L2/L3 support for Microsoft SQL Server databases.
• Administer SQL Server environments including installation, configuration, upgrades, patching, migrations, cloning, database refresh, SQL Agent jobs, storage planning and capacity management.
• Manage high availability and disaster recovery technologies such as Always On Availability Groups, Failover Cluster Instances, log shipping, replication and database mirroring where applicable.
• Plan, validate and support backup and recovery operations including full, differential and transaction log backups, restore testing, point-in-time recovery and DR exercise support.
• Monitor database health, availability, performance, space, jobs, alerts, wait statistics, blocking, deadlocks and logs using SQL Server Management Studio, SQL Server Agent, DMVs or monitoring platforms.
• Analyze and tune SQL Server performance using execution plans, index tuning, statistics maintenance, query optimization, wait analysis, memory/CPU/I/O trend analysis and workload reviews.
• Support security, access management, SQL logins/users/roles, auditing, encryption awareness, vulnerability remediation and compliance controls for SQL Server databases.
• Troubleshoot production incidents such as database availability issues, backup failures, transaction log growth, storage/disk capacity issues, SQL Agent job failures, application connectivity issues and authentication problems.
• Coordinate with application teams, infrastructure teams, backup teams, Windows/Unix teams, security teams, vendors and stakeholders for incident and change resolution.
• Lead technical reviews, guide DBA team members, perform peer reviews, support task allocation and ensure adherence to standards, SOPs and SLA commitments.
• Participate in incident, problem, service request, change, release and knowledge management processes using approved service management tools.
• Prepare and maintain runbooks, SOPs, architecture notes, implementation plans, deployment steps, DR test evidence, RCA documents, release notes and knowledge articles.

Experience required:

• Good communication skills with ability to work with stakeholders, application owners, infrastructure teams, security teams, DBAs and delivery leadership.
• Minimum 10-15 years of IT experience with strong hands-on Microsoft SQL Server DBA experience in production support and enterprise database administration.
• Strong experience with SQL Server 2016/2019/2022 or later, SQL Server Management Studio, SQL Server Agent, Always On Availability Groups, Failover Clustering and backup/recovery.
• Experience in SQL Server installation, configuration, patching, upgrades, migrations, database refresh, backup/recovery, performance tuning and operational monitoring.
• Experience in Windows Server environments including service management, event log review, filesystem checks,