Technical Delivery Manager - Database

About Planet Planet is a global provider of integrated technology and payments solutions for retail and hospitality customers.

We create great experiences for the millions of people who use our payments, software, and tax-free solutions every minute of every day.

Planet empowers its customers to deliver great customer experiences by combining payments and software in ways that drive greater loyalty, increase revenue and save time.

Founded over 35 years ago and with our headquarters in London, today we have more than 2,500 employees located across six continents serving our customers in more than 120 markets.

Role overview:

We are seeking a Technical Delivery Manager
- Database to own the delivery, service quality and day-to-day running of Planet's database estate across Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle and MySQL, spanning on-premise, Azure and AWS platforms within a large PCI DSS scope. This is a hands-on delivery and service management role rather than a line-management one: the database engineering capacity sits with our managed service partner, and your job is to make that engine deliver.

You will be the single point of accountability for database work landing safely and on time - owning the change and maintenance calendar, driving the partner's DBA pods through the ticket and escalation queues, chairing the technical calls where competing priorities get resolved, and being the person the business comes to when a database problem needs an owner. Alongside the run, you will drive a live cost-optimisation agenda and carry the database evidence for PCI DSS and internal audit.

The role reports to the Senior Director - DWP & Infrastructure Services.

What you will do:

Database service delivery
- Own end-to-end delivery of database work across the estate: changes, migrations, patching, upgrades and maintenance, each properly scoped, scheduled, communicated and completed without surprises to the business.

Demand & ticket ownership
- Act as day-to-day owner of the database ticket queue: triage incoming demand, set priority, chase progress, unblock the engineers doing the work, and keep requesters informed on where their request stands.

Change & maintenance planning
- Run the database change and maintenance calendar, taking work through CAB and the standard-change process, and coordinating downtime windows with application owners and affected user communities well in advance.

Incident & escalation ownership
- Serve as escalation point for database incidents and problems; drive them to resolution across teams and vendors, establish genuine root cause, and turn the outcome into a permanent fix or a standard.

Managed service partner governance
- Direct and hold to account the partner's DBA pods on Planet's behalf, working daily with their project managers, architects and DBAs to set priorities, agree approach and keep delivery moving; govern service quality against contracted SLAs, challenge rejected or stalled tickets, and manage scope boundaries.

Cost optimisation & rationalisation
- Own a standing cost-reduction agenda for the estate: disk and storage right-sizing, decommissioning unused databases, and powering off redundant servers; quantify the saving, assess the risk, and sequence the change so it actually lands.

Reliability, HA & DR
- Assure backup, recovery, high availability and disaster recovery arrangements across the estate are tested, evidenced, and genuinely meet agreed RTO and RPO commitments.

Security & compliance
- Own the database contribution to PCI DSS compliance and internal audit (encryption, access control, auditing, segregation of duties); govern patching and vulnerability remediation, and keep runbooks, SOPs and DR playbooks accurate and audit-ready.

Technical ownership & stakeholders
- Provide…