Site Reliability Engineer - SQL Server

Location: Indianapolis

At Lilly, we unite caring with discovery to make life better for people around the world. We are a global healthcare leader headquartered in Indianapolis, Indiana. Our employees around the world work to discover and bring life-changing medicines to those who need them, improve the understanding and management of disease, and give back to our communities through philanthropy and volunteerism.

We give our best effort to our work, and we put people first. We’re looking for people who are determined to make life better for people around the world.

Enable reliable, secure, high‑performing SQL Server and cloud database environments by driving automation, modernizing multi‑cloud data platforms, and ensuring enterprise‑grade observability, compliance, and operational excellence.

The Tech@Lilly team is actively looking for an experienced SQL Server Site Reliability Engineer who is passionate about advancing enterprise‑scale data platforms, modernizing database operations, and enabling Cloud‑ready SQL servers. If you thrive in solving complex reliability challenges, automating repetitive tasks, strengthening governance, and empowering application teams—this role is for you. Your expertise accelerates innovation, improves system resilience, and supports the mission of delivering medicines that make life better for people around the world.
** What You’ll Be Doing:
** You will serve as a core engineering and operational expert for SQL Server across on‑premise and multi‑cloud environments. In this role, you will ensure availability, resiliency, automation, observability, and lifecycle management of mission‑critical SQL server services. You will work closely with Cloud Infrastructure, SMEs, Security, and Application Engineering teams to modernize, optimize, and secure enterprise database operations.
** How You’ll Succeed:
** Operational Support
* Provide day‑to‑day administration and operational support for SQL Server (2014, 2016, and above).
* Perform performance tuning, patching, upgrades, backup/recovery, and capacity management.
* Ensure database reliability, availability, and compliance with enterprise security standards.
* Handle database incidents, requests, and changes.

Database Administration
* Install, configure, upgrade, and patch SQL Server across all editions and environments.
* Troubleshoot database issues, errors, blocking, deadlocks, memory/storage performance, and bottlenecks.
* Optimize queries, indexes, and execution plans.
* Support new server/database creation, maintenance job design, CDC configuration, and platform integration.

Multi‑Cloud Database Modernization
* Support SQL Server migrations to Azure, AWS, and other cloud platforms.
* Assist in designing DR, replication strategies, and cross‑cloud failover.

Automation & AIOps
* Build automation using Power Shell, Python, Ansible, Terraform, Bicep/ARM, and Shell scripting.
* Implement Infrastructure‑as‑Code (IaC) for database provisioning, patching, and configuration.
* Apply AIOps practices for anomaly detection, predictive alerting, and proactive incident prevention.

Collaboration & Continuous Improvement
* Partner with Cloud Engineering, Operations, and Application teams to deliver reliable database services.
* Drive modernization through automation, observability, and AI‑driven insights.
* Create runbooks, SOPs, and best practice guides.

Capacity Planning & Scalability
* Forecast database growth and manage resource utilization.
* Ensure systems scale efficiently to support high‑volume enterprise workloads.

Database Security & Compliance
* Enforce enterprise security standards, RBAC, encryption, auditing, and least‑privilege access.
* Conduct vulnerability scans, patching, and upgrade planning.

Backup & Recovery Management
* Design and automate full, differential, and transaction log backup strategies.
* Store and manage backups using PPDM (DELL storage).
* Validate RTO/RPO through regular restore testing.

Cost Optimization
* Optimize SQL workloads across on‑prem, Azure SQL DB, Azure Managed Instance, and IaaS.
* Ensure cost‑efficient sizing and utilization.

SRE Principles & SLA Enforcement
* Define and maintain SLIs, SLOs, and SLAs for SQL services.
* Apply SRE best…