Principal Database Engineer

To provide expert-level administration, maintenance, and support of the Cornerstone’s database infrastructure, while leveraging AI and intelligent automation to enhance operational efficiency, proactive monitoring, and autonomous remediation. The role ensures high availability, optimal performance, security, and compliance across production and non-production environments supporting business-critical applications and automation platforms.

• Support and develop AI-powered monitoring and alerting systems that autonomously detect anomalies, diagnose root causes, and recommend remediation actions.
• Collaborate on the development and maintenance of LLM-based database agents (Text-to-SQL, knowledge retrieval, automated diagnostics).
• Contribute to the RAG (Retrieval Augmented Generation) knowledge base by documenting incidents, resolutions, and runbooks for AI-driven reference.
• Support AI-driven root cause analysis workflows that use real-time metrics and historical patterns to diagnose database incidents.
• Maintain and enhance automated playbook execution engines that trigger self-healing remediation workflows.
• Develop and refine prompt engineering for database-specific AI agents to improve accuracy of diagnostics and recommendations.
• Feed performance data, incident patterns, and operational telemetry into AI/ML pipelines for trend detection and capacity forecasting.
• Support natural language query interfaces enabling stakeholders to query database health and metrics without writing SQL.

• Install, configure, and maintain database instances across production, staging, pilot and development environments.
• Perform daily health checks, proactive monitoring, and maintenance of database platforms.
• Manage database storage, capacity planning, and growth forecasting.
• Execute database patching, version upgrades, and service pack deployments following change management procedures.
• Maintain database documentation including configurations, runbooks, and operational procedures.

• Monitor and tune database performance including CPU utilisation, memory pressure, I/O throughput, and query execution.
• Identify and resolve blocking, deadlocks, long-running queries, and tempdb contention.
• Analyse execution plans, wait statistics, and DMV outputs to diagnose root causes of performance degradation.
• Implement and manage indexing strategies, statistics maintenance, and database integrity checks.
• Provide recommendations for query optimization and schema improvements to development teams.

• Administer and maintain High Availability.
• Design, implement, and test backup and recovery strategies ensuring RPO/RTO targets are met.
• Perform regular disaster recovery testing and validate restore procedures.
• Execute failover and switchover operations during planned maintenance and unplanned incidents.
• Monitor replication health and resolve synchronisation issues.

• Implement and manage database security including role-based access control, encryption (TDE), and auditing.
• Ensure data is accessible only to appropriately authorised personnel.
• Support compliance requirements including data protection, access reviews, and audit responses.
• Manage database user accounts, permissions, and authentication configurations.
• Implement data masking and obfuscation for non-production environments.

• Develop and maintain automation scripts using T-SQL, Power Shell, and Python for routine database operations.
• Support and maintain database provisioning and refresh pipelines.
• Configure and manage SQL Server Agent jobs, alerts, and notifications.
• Identify opportunities to automate manual processes and reduce operational overhead.
• Support CI/CD pipelines and deployment processes related to database changes.

• Provide expert-level troubleshooting and resolution for complex database incidents.
• Participate in on-call rotation for production database support.
• Perform root cause analysis for incidents and implement preventive measures.
• Collaborate with application teams, infrastructure teams, and third‑party vendors to resolve cross‑functional issues.
• Escalate critical issues appropriately and communicate status to stakeholders.

• Support database-related projects including migrations, platform upgrades, and new system implementations.
• Participate in capacity planning and infrastructure scaling initiatives.
• Contribute to the evaluation and adoption of new database technologies and best practices.
• Participate in change advisory processes and provide technical assessment of proposed changes.
• Share knowledge with team members and contribute to team development.