Database Architect ( MS SQL)

We are seeking a Database Architect with deep Microsoft SQL Server expertise to lead the design, standards, and long-term direction of our database estate across all production and staging environments. The role spans on-premises infrastructure, AWS RDS, and Azure SQL, with a primary focus on MS SQL Server and secondary coverage of PostgreSQL and MySQL. The Architect will set the technical direction for high availability, disaster recovery, performance, and security across the platform, and will work closely with Platform Engineering, Developers and Application teams to support business-critical workloads, including those underpinning major operational events such as the World Cup 2026.
Key Responsibilities
Architecture and Standards
- Define and own the database reference architecture across MS SQL Server, PostgreSQL, and MySQL on AWS RDS, Azure SQL, and on-premises infrastructure.
- Establish and maintain technical standards, design patterns, and best practices for database deployments, including naming, partitioning, indexing, and security baselines.
- Lead the design of high availability and disaster recovery topologies, including Always On Availability Groups, log shipping, replication, and cloud-native HA/DR options.
- Validate backup strategies against agreed RPO and RTO objectives across all environments.
- Drive capacity planning and growth forecasting based on workload trends, supporting infrastructure sizing decisions.
- Evaluate and recommend database tooling, monitoring solutions, and platform features; lead vendor and product assessments.
Performance and Optimization
- Lead complex query performance analysis and optimization across all product databases, with deep focus on MS SQL Server internals (query plans, statistics, wait stats, locking and blocking).
- Tune SQL Server instances at the engine level: memory configuration, MAXDOP, cost threshold for parallelism, TempDB optimization, trace flags, and server-level configurations.
- Partner with development teams on schema design, indexing strategies, and query patterns to ensure scalability is designed in, not retrofitted.
- Identify and resolve resource contention, bottlenecks, and architectural issues that limit performance or scalability.
Security and Compliance
- Define database access control models, role-based security, and least-privilege standards across the estate.
- Lead the implementation of encryption at rest and in transit, key management, and Transparent Data Encryption where applicable.
- Define hardening standards for SQL Server and other platforms; coordinate patching strategy with operations.
- Support audit and compliance requirements related to database access, data handling, and regulatory obligations relevant to the gaming industry.
Operational Leadership
- Provide senior technical escalation for P1 and P2 database incidents, including root cause analysis and post-incident remediation.
- Set the standards for change management on database platforms: review and approve significant DDL changes, migrations, and data patches; define rollback and impact analysis requirements.
- Provide on-call senior support during critical operational periods (e.g., major sporting events, large deployments, migrations).
- Mentor DBAs and Platform Engineers, raising the technical bar across the team.
Automation and Documentation
- Drive automation of database operations using PowerShell, T-SQL, and native tools: backups, health checks, maintenance, and provisioning.
- Maintain authoritative database architecture documentation, runbooks, and standard operating procedures.
- Contribute to the operational knowledge base in Confluence and lead knowledge-sharing across Platform Engineering.
Required Qualifications
- Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, IT, Engineering, or equivalent.
- 8+ years of hands-on database administration experience, with at least 5 years focused on Microsoft SQL Server in mission-critical production environments.
- Proven track record designing and operating SQL Server Always On Availability Groups, replication, and disaster recovery topologies.
- Deep expertise in SQL Server performance tuning: query plan analysis, indexing strategy, statistics, wait stats, locking and blocking, TempDB tuning.
- Strong T-SQL skills, including stored procedures, functions, and advanced query patterns.
- Hands-on experience operating SQL workloads on AWS RDS and Azure SQL (managed instance and / or single database).
- Working knowledge of PostgreSQL and MySQL administration in production environments.
- Proficiency in PowerShell for database automation.
- Solid understanding of database security: role-based access control, encryption at rest and in transit, auditing, and hardening.
- Experience leading P1 and P2 incident response and post-incident reviews.
- Excellent communication skills in English; ability to engage with both technical and business stakeholders.
Preferred
- Microsoft certifications such as Azure Database Administrator Associate (DP-300) or equivalent.
- Experience with monitoring tooling: Redgate SQL Monitor, SolarWinds DPA, Datadog, Azure Monitor, or equivalent.
- Exposure to Infrastructure as Code for database provisioning (Terraform, Bicep, ARM, CloudFormation).
- Experience supporting database workloads in regulated environments (gaming, finance) with audit and compliance exposure.
- Background in 24x7 high-transaction-volume environments with strict availability targets (99.9% or higher).
- Experience leading database migrations between on-premises and cloud, or between cloud providers.
- Familiarity with containerised database workloads and managed Kubernetes (AKS, EKS) is a plus.