Lead Database Administrator; SQL Server & Cloud Platforms

Introduction

At Gallagher Bassett, we’re there when it matters most because helping people through challenging moments is more than just our job, it’s our purpose. Every day, we help clients navigate complexity, support recovery, and deliver outcomes that make a real difference in people’s lives. It takes empathy, precision, and a strong sense of partnership—and that’s exactly what you’ll find here. We’re a team of fast‑paced fixers, empathetic experts, and outcomes drivers—people who care deeply about doing the right thing and doing it well.

Whether you’re managing claims, supporting clients, or improving processes, you’ll play a vital role in helping businesses and individuals move forward with confidence. Here, you’ll be supported by a culture that values teamwork, encourages curiosity, and celebrates the impact of your work. Because when you’re here, you’re part of something bigger. You’re part of a team that shows up, stands together, and leads with purpose.

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.

• 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…