Database Administrator; DBA

Database Administrator

Location:

Remote and client site

Methods is a £100M+ IT Services Consultancy who has partnered with a range of central government departments and agencies to transform the way the public sector operates in the UK. Established over 30 years ago and UK-based, we apply our skills in transformation, delivery, and collaboration from across the Methods Group, to create end‑to‑end business and technical solutions that are people‑centred, safe, and designed for the future.

Our human touch sets us apart from other consultancies, systems integrators and software houses – with people, technology, and data at the heart of who we are, we believe in creating value and sustainability through everything we do for our clients, staff, communities, and the planet.

We support our clients in the success of their projects while working collaboratively to share skill sets and solve problems. At Methods we have fun while working hard; we are not afraid of making mistakes and learning from them.

Methods was acquired by the Alten Group in early 2022.

We are seeking an experienced Database Administrator to support critical services, ensuring the integrity, availability, performance, and security of data across highly regulated justice systems.

This role operates within a live service environment where reliability, auditability, and data protection are paramount. You will work across BAU support (AMS/3rdLine) and change delivery (PET / Product teams), ensuring databases are resilient, compliant, and optimised to support operational case working systems.

You will play a key role in supporting Postgre

SQL (Azure Flexible Server) estates, contributing to performance tuning, incident resolution, data governance, and the evolution of reporting and analytics capabilities (including Microsoft Fabric).

• Manage and maintain Postgre
  
  SQL databases (Azure Flexible Server)

• Provide BAU support (2nd/3rd line) for production incidents, including performance degradation, outages, and data issues

• Ensure high levels of availability, resilience, and operational stability across all environments (Dev, SIT, NFT, Prod)

• Support release activities, validating database changes and ensuring safe deployment into live service

• Monitor database performance using tools such as Dynatrace and native Azure monitoring

• Diagnose and resolve performance bottlenecks (queries, indexing, storage, connection limits)

• Tune SQL queries and optimise schema design for high‑volume transactional systems

• Support capacity planning and scaling for large datasets (including JSONB‑heavy workloads
  )

• Implement and manage access controls, roles, and permissions
  , aligning with government security policies

• Ensure compliance with:

• UK GDPR / Data Protection Act 2018 (Law Enforcement Processing)

• Cross‑Government security standards and retention policies

• Support audit and forensic analysis by ensuring data traceability and integrity

• Work with security and architecture teams to reduce over‑permissioning and role sprawl

• Design and maintain backup and recovery strategies (PITR, snapshots, geo‑redundancy)

• Support disaster recovery planning and testing

• Implement and maintain high availability patterns (replication, failover)

• Manage and optimise databases hosted in Microsoft Azure Flexible Server

• Support infrastructure‑as‑code deployments using Terraform

• Contribute to cost optimisation and efficient resource utilisation

• Troubleshoot platform‑level issues (extensions, replication, CDC, permissions)

• Support integration of operational data into analytics platforms such as Microsoft Fabric

• Assist with ingestion patterns (CDC, event‑based, batch)

• Work with data engineers to structure data for reporting and audit use cases

• Address challenges with semi‑structured data (e.g. JSON/JSONB fields)

• Collaborate with engineering teams on:

• Database design and schema evolution

• Query optimisation

• Data modelling for services and reporting

• Support CI/CD pipelines…