Lead Database Administrator; SQL Server & Cloud Platforms

Lead Database Administrator (SQL Server & Cloud Platforms)

Gallagher Bassett, a division of Arthur J. Gallagher & Co., is seeking an accomplished Lead Database Administrator (SQL Server & Cloud Platforms) to provide technical leadership, strategic direction, and operational excellence across the enterprise database ecosystem. This role is responsible for the administration, security, performance, resiliency, and modernization of mission-critical SQL Server platforms spanning on-premises, hybrid, and cloud environments.

The Lead Database Administrator will serve as the senior technical authority for database services, partnering with application, infrastructure, security, architecture, data, and business teams to ensure highly available, scalable, secure, and compliant database platforms. This individual will lead database initiatives, mentor DBA resources, drive automation and operational improvements, and support Gallagher Bassett's cloud modernization and enterprise platform strategy.

This role requires a hands-on leader with deep Microsoft SQL Server expertise, strong cloud platform experience, a mature operational mindset, and the ability to communicate technical risk, resiliency posture, and strategic recommendations to technology and business leadership.

Duties and Responsibilities:

• Lead the administration, configuration, and ongoing support of enterprise Microsoft SQL Server environments across on-premises, hybrid, and cloud platforms.
• Serve as the technical lead and escalation point for complex SQL Server issues, production incidents, performance concerns, and database platform decisions.
• Provide technical leadership, coaching, mentoring, and knowledge transfer to DBA team members, application teams, and other IT operations resources.
• Define and implement database standards, governance processes, architecture patterns, naming conventions, operational procedures, and best practices for enterprise database management.
• Own and/or participate in database capacity planning, lifecycle management, patching strategy, upgrade planning, and roadmap development.
• Design, implement, and support highly available and resilient SQL Server architectures using Always On Availability Groups, Failover Clustering, replication, log shipping, backup/restore strategies, and cloud-native resiliency capabilities.
• Develop, maintain, and regularly test disaster recovery and business continuity plans to meet established recovery time objectives (RTO) and recovery point objectives (RPO).
• Lead complex database migrations, consolidations, upgrades, cloud modernization initiatives, platform rationalization efforts, and decommissioning activities.
• Manage and optimize cloud database platforms including Azure SQL Managed Instance, Azure SQL Database, SQL Server on Azure Virtual Machines and related cloud data services.
• Evaluate, plan, and execute SQL Server modernization patterns including rehost, refactor, replatform, managed instance adoption, and cloud-native data service transitions.
• Monitor and optimize database performance through advanced query tuning, index optimization, workload analysis, execution plan review, wait statistics analysis, resource governance, and automation.
• Support and enhance Shadow base replication technologies used to synchronize data between HPE Non Stop and Microsoft SQL environments, including monitoring, troubleshooting, validation, and operational documentation.
• Enhance proactive monitoring, alerting, observability, capacity forecasting, and health reporting processes to ensure database platform stability, scalability, and reliability.
• Drive automation initiatives using AI, Power Shell, T-SQL, SQL Agent, automation frameworks, Infrastructure as Code concepts, workload automation, and enterprise scheduling tools.
• Partner with application development, architecture, and data teams to establish data design standards, database development practices, and application performance optimization strategies.
• Implement and maintain database security controls including least-privilege access, encryption at rest and in transit, auditing, privileged access management, vulnerability remediation, data retention, and regulatory compliance requirements.
• Collaborate with cybersecurity, governance, risk, audit, and compliance teams to ensure adherence to enterprise policies, regulatory obligations, and industry standards.
• Develop executive-level reporting and communicate database risks, operational health, modernization progress, resiliency posture, and strategic recommendations to IT leadership.
• Create and maintain comprehensive database architecture, operational, security, monitoring, backup, recovery, and runbook documentation.
• Contribute to vendor evaluations, licensing analysis, support escalations, cost optimization opportunities, and platform selection decisions related to SQL Server and cloud database services.
• Participate in leadership-level planning for mergers, acquisitions, divestitures, data center initiatives, and enterprise…