Principal Engineer - DBA

On 1 April 2026, NHS National Services Scotland (NSS) and NHS Education for Scotland (NES) became one national organisation, focused on continuity today and a stronger, more connected service for tomorrow.

As part of this transformation, NSS and NES have joined to form a new organisation:
Public Services Delivery Scotland (PSD Scotland). This new organisation will play a pivotal role in supporting the renewal and ensuring the long‑term sustainability of health and care services across Scotland.

PSD Scotland unites expertise from NES and NSS in a way that will allow us to accelerate national programmes to support the NHS to deliver better care, now and in the future. We support staff with education and training, provide the tools and data that improve services, and run vital national functions such as procurement, logistics and blood, tissue and cell services.

As part of the IT Strategic Business Unit, PSD Scotland Infrastructure services has direct responsibility for over 250 different applications (deployed both on‑premises in one of two data centres, and in the public cloud) and for processing over 100 million records per year. The PSD Scotland Infrastructure Server team is responsible for maintaining and supporting existing platforms as well as researching emerging technologies and recommending future direction.

They are also involved in a number of major IT projects aimed at optimising the use of IT infrastructure. The team is split into four areas of expertise – Microsoft, Unix, Cloud and Oracle Database Admin.

An opportunity has become available within our DBA team for an experienced professional to work within the Server team as one of three Oracle and two SQL Server database administrators with responsibility for the support and maintenance of over 80 production and around 150 test and development databases.

PSD Scotland has various implementations of Oracle database, from version 11g up to 19c, hosted on physical and virtual platforms running various flavours of Linux and Solaris, including an Exadata cluster in Oracle’s OCI cloud platform. SQL Server databases are hosted on a SQL Server 19 HA cluster running on Windows 2022. PSD Scotland also manages a large Azure subscription with SQL Server SaaS deployments.

There are currently no Oracle databases deployed in Azure, but this is likely to change in the near future. Candidates should have experience of supporting Oracle databases from version 11.2 onwards and/or SQL Server 2019.

• Performing routine administration tasks including installing software, creating and upgrading databases, managing users and security, database backup and recovery, monitoring and performance tuning.
• Providing technical support to users throughout PSD Scotland; resolving problems within an agreed timescale by using an analytical approach to identify, resolve and prevent recurrence.
• Managing the progression of multiple tasks where unexpected events may require switching priorities without warning, such as virus attacks or system failures.
• Ensuring departmental SOPs and standards are followed.
• Liaising with business users to gather technical requirement information and providing clear technical advice.
• Keeping up to date with new and emerging technologies through research and development.
• Working closely with colleagues within the IT department and third‑party suppliers to optimise resource use and service delivery, ensuring two‑way communication; the SBU operates within an ITIL service management framework.

The IM & T Principal Engineer should be educated to degree level or equivalent. The post holder should have an appreciation of the business requirements of PSD Scotland and combine this knowledge with finely tuned customer‑relation skills.

Gyle Square, Edinburgh or Delta House, Glasgow.

Currently hybrid working. Monday to Friday, 36 hours per week. It is a condition of employment that you must live and remain a resident within the UK and have entitlement to work in the UK for the post you will be employed in.

Our benefits package includes a pension scheme, a comprehensive…