Senior Database Engineer

Senior Database Engineer – Long‑term contract, on‑site, Columbus, Ohio.

This position will support the Division of Information Technology at the Ohio Industrial Commission in the government domain.

• Analyze, tune, and optimize slow SQL queries and stored procedures to enhance application performance.
• Design, implement, and unit‑test high‑performance data access layers (JPA/DAO/JDBC) and data‑centric microservices in Java.
• Conduct rigorous code reviews focusing on ORM usage, transaction management, and efficient data retrieval to prevent anti‑patterns such as N+1 queries.
• Monitor, diagnose, and resolve critical issues related to database locking, deadlocks, and high resource utilization.
• Collaborate with application developers to design and document optimal physical and logical database schemas (DDL) for new features.
• Review daily database health reports, perform routine maintenance (e.g., statistics updates), and ensure replication health.
• Develop and maintain custom tooling or scripts (in Java or scripting languages) to automate repetitive DBA tasks and enhance operational monitoring.
• Ensure that database migrations and application changes are safely deployed through CI/CD pipelines following governance and testing standards.

• Extensive experience with SQL Server database design, installation, conversion, and performance tuning.
• Proficiency in relational data modeling (3rd Normal Form) and No
  
  SQL modeling concepts.
• Strong knowledge of SQL, DDL, DML, and advanced tuning techniques (indexing, partitioning, materialized views, execution plan analysis).
• Experience with database monitoring tools such as Prometheus, Grafana, OEM, and New Relic, including custom alerting thresholds.
• Solid background in Java (11+), JPA/Hibernate, RESTful web services, JUnit, and SQL.
• Capability to develop and consume RESTful APIs for seamless integration.
• Strong communication skills, both written and spoken, and ability to work effectively in a team environment.

• 10+ years of experience administering and tuning high‑traffic production databases (e.g., SQL Server).
• 10 years of expert‑level knowledge of SQL, DDL, DML, and advanced tuning techniques.
• 10 years of experience with database monitoring tools and building custom alert thresholds.
• 5+ years of professional development experience with Java 11+ (or higher) in a Windows environment.
• 5+ years of experience with Java Persistence API (JPA), SQL, RESTful web services, and JUnit.
• 5+ years of experience designing and implementing RESTful APIs for data delivery.
• 5+ years of in‑depth understanding of Object‑Relational Mapping and its performance implications.
• Highly desired: experience working with IBM DB2 database.