Senior SQL DBA

Location:

Birmingham
- On-site

Salary: £60,000-£65,000

Job Type: Full-Time, Permanent

No Sponsorship available must be UK based

We’re working with an established organisation seeking an experienced Senior SQL Server Database Administrator (DBA) to take ownership of database performance, reliability and optimisation across its AWS environment.

This is an excellent opportunity for a hands‑on SQL specialist to become the primary technical owner of database administration and performance, with responsibility for identifying issues, improving scalability and ensuring critical systems operate efficiently.

You’ll work closely with software developers and technical stakeholders, investigating complex database challenges, optimising queries and implementing improvements that have a measurable impact on application performance.

This role offers significant autonomy and the opportunity to shape database standards, monitoring and long‑term performance strategy.

• Administer, maintain and optimise multiple Microsoft SQL Server instances.
• Monitor database performance and proactively identify potential issues.
• Investigate slow‑running queries, blocking, deadlocks, indexing problems and execution plan regressions.
• Use Query Store, execution plans, Dynamic Management Views (DMVs) and Extended Events to diagnose performance issues.
• Optimise T‑SQL queries, indexing strategies, database statistics and SQL Server configuration.
• Investigate SQL generated by Entity Framework, identifying N+1 queries, excessive data retrieval and inefficient application‑to‑database interactions.
• Collaborate with software developers to resolve application‑level and database‑level performance bottlenecks.
• Plan and implement database improvements to support increasing customer numbers and data volumes.
• Support SQL Server environments hosted on AWS, including EC2 and/or RDS.
• Evaluate database sizing, storage, infrastructure performance and cost efficiency.
• Maintain backup, recovery, high availability and disaster recovery processes.
• Support SQL Server Always On Availability Groups and relevant AWS resilience configurations.
• Lead technical investigations during database performance incidents and deliver permanent fixes.
• Develop monitoring, dashboards and alerts to identify performance issues before they affect users.
• Automate routine administration and maintenance tasks using Power Shell and related tools.
• Maintain documentation covering database configuration, performance, resilience and operational procedures.

• Proven experience as a SQL Server DBA, Senior Database Administrator or Database Performance Engineer.
• Strong Microsoft SQL Server administration and troubleshooting skills.
• Advanced T‑SQL, including query optimisation and understanding of the SQL Server query optimiser.
• Excellent knowledge of execution plans, indexing, statistics and performance tuning.
• Experience administering and optimising multiple SQL Server instances.
• Strong understanding of Entity Framework and how application code generates SQL queries.
• Experience proactively monitoring and diagnosing database performance issues.
• Commercial experience with SQL Server in AWS environments, ideally EC2 and/or RDS.
• Understanding of AWS infrastructure, storage and networking considerations affecting database performance.
• Experience with database backup and recovery, high availability and disaster recovery.
• Familiarity with Always On Availability Groups and/or AWS Multi‑AZ configurations.
• Experience planning for database scalability and growing data volumes.
• Scripting skills using Power Shell, dbatools or similar tools.
• Strong analytical and problem‑solving skills.
• Excellent communication skills and the…