Database Administrator Berkeley IT

At the University of California, Berkeley , we are dedicated to fostering a community where everyone feels welcome and can thrive. Our culture of openness, freedom, and belonging makes it a special place for students, faculty, and staff, who are among the most talented and accomplished anywhere, including Nobel laureates, Pulitzer Prize winners, and Mac Arthur Fellows. Since our founding in 1868, we have been an engine for innovation - driving intellectual, economic, and social progress that benefits California, the U.S., and beyond.

Together, we change the world.

At Berkeley, the best careers are built on a foundation of continuous learning and growth . We actively support professional development by providing all full-time staff employees with at least 80 hours of paid time per year and provide space for supportive colleague communities via numerous employee resource groups.

This unit brings together and integrates the engineering and implementation of core, foundational campus IT infrastructure, delivering essential IT services that support UC Berkeley’s continually evolving needs.

The Database Administrator provides database administration services for both enterprise and open-source database platforms. This position involves the concepts of schema planning, architectural design, and operational continuity of campus database systems. Responsibilities include regular system patching, system upgrades, performance tuning, data and platform backups, data and platform recovery, and system monitoring.

The First Review Date for this job is: 9/1/2026. For full consideration, please apply before 9/17/2026.

High Availability & Disaster Recovery (HADR) - 10%

• Design and Implement HADR Solutions:
  Architect and manage enterprise‑grade high availability solutions (e.g., SQL Server Always On Availability Groups, Oracle HA, or Multi‑availability zone deployments in AWS/Azure).
• Disaster Recovery Planning:
  Develop, document, and regularly test comprehensive disaster recovery (DR) plans to ensure business continuity and meet strict RPO (Recovery Point Objective) and RTO (Recovery Time Objective) targets.
• Backup Strategy:
  Oversee complex backup and restoration strategies across the enterprise, ensuring data integrity and retention compliance.

Performance Tuning & Optimization - 15%

• System‑Wide Tuning:
  Monitor and optimize database performance at the instance and OS level, including memory allocation, I/O throughput, and CPU utilization.
• Query Optimization:
  Identify and resolve complex performance bottlenecks, including long‑running queries, blocking/deadlocking, and suboptimal execution plans.
• Index & Statistics Management:
  Proactively manage indexes and statistics to maintain peak query performance as data scales.

Security, Governance & Compliance - 20%

• Data Security & Encryption:
  Implement and manage security protocols, including TDE (Transparent Data Encryption), data masking, and row‑level security.
• Access Control:
  Define and enforce the principle of least privilege through robust identity and access management (IAM) and database‑level permissions.
• Auditing & Compliance:
  Ensure databases meet regulatory requirements (e.g., GDPR, HIPAA, SOX) by conducting regular security audits and maintaining detailed logs of data access and changes.
• Cloud Migration:
  Lead the migration of on‑premises databases to cloud‑native platforms (RDS, Azure SQL, OCI) or hybrid environments.
• Cloud Resource Management:
  Optimize cloud database costs and performance by right‑sizing instances and leveraging serverless or auto‑scaling features.
• Cross‑Platform Integration:
  Manage data flow and synchronization between disparate systems (e.g., legacy on‑prem systems and modern cloud applications).

Automation & Dev Ops Integration - 10%

• Infrastructure as Code (IaC):
  Use tools like Terraform or Ansible to automate the provisioning and configuration of database environments.
• CI/CD Pipeline Support:
  Collaborate with Dev Ops teams to integrate database schema changes and deployments into automated pipelines (e.g., using Flyway or Liquibase).
• Scripting:
  Develop and maintain advanced scripts (Python, Power…