Database Engineer- SQL Server

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Job Description

The Opportunity:

We are seeking a SQL Server Database Engineer with a strong focus on production operations and reliability engineering (SRE). As part of this team, you will contribute to the plan, build, and run of Microsoft SQL Server database infrastructure, with a primary focus on system reliability, performance, and operational excellence. This is a hands-on Microsoft SQL Server role requiring strong T-SQL and Power Shell skills, with an emphasis on production support, automation, and performance tuning.

This role is ideal for an engineer who enjoys owning production database environments, solving real-time issues, and improving system stability through automation, observability, and proactive performance optimization. You will play a key role in ensuring databases are highly available, resilient, and operating at scale-rather than building analytics platforms or data pipelines. You'll work both independently and collaboratively to deliver database improvements, troubleshoot complex issues, and support critical production systems, while applying best practices in SQL Server administration, automation, and reliability engineering.

The Work Itself:
Production Database Ownership (SRE Focus) Own the health, stability, and reliability of SQL Server production environments. Continuously improve availability, monitoring, alerting, and incident response practices. Performance Tuning and Reliability Diagnose and resolve real-world production issues including slow queries, blocking, deadlocks, and resource contention. Optimize performance through advanced T-SQL tuning, indexing strategies, and execution plan analysis. Monitoring, Alerting, and Incident Response Build and maintain monitoring and alerting systems for database health and performance.

Participate in on-call rotations, triaging and resolving incidents to minimize downtime and business impact. Backup, Recovery, and High Availability Own backup/restore processes, disaster recovery planning, and HA solutions (Always On, replication). Ensure systems are resilient and meet uptime expectations. Automation and Operational Efficiency Develop and maintain automation using Power Shell and SQL Server tooling (SQL Agent jobs, scripting, etc.) to streamline operations and reduce manual intervention.

Security and Compliance Manage database access, permissions, and security configurations. Ensure adherence to data protection and operational security best practices. Collaboration with Engineering Teams Work closely with application engineers to support production database usage, improve query efficiency, and troubleshoot issues in real time. This is a hybrid position. Expectation of days in the office will be confirmed by your Hiring Manager.

This role requires 24/7 oncall production support. This role is not eligible for employment-based visa sponsorship. Candidates must be authorized to work in the United States without current or future sponsorship. Visa requires at least 3 days in office, expectations of these days will be confirmed by your Hiring Manager. Qualifications Basic Qualifications
• 2+ years of relevant work experience and a Bachelors degree, OR 5+ years of relevant work experience

Preferred Qualifications 2-5 years of hands-on experience with Microsoft SQL Server in production environments Strong experience with: T-SQL (query tuning, stored procedures, performance troubleshooting) Power Shell scripting for automation and operational tasks SQL Server performance tuning (indexing, execution plans) Experience supporting production systems or on-call…