Lead Database & Data Platform Engineer

About the role

The Lead Database & Data Platform Engineer will be the top technical authority on data for two engineering groups, responsible for assessing, upgrading, and standardising a complex database estate that spans Microsoft SQL Server on self‑managed EC2 instances and MySQL on RDS. The role is critical to deliver a time‑sensitive Windows Server OS upgrade before year‑end and to establish long‑term data governance and reliability.

Key responsibilities

• Assess the current database estate – inventory, backup & recovery posture, high‑availability configuration, monitoring gaps, access model, capacity and cost.
• Execute a Windows Server 2016 → 2022 upgrade across an Always On Availability Group cluster with zero data loss and minimal downtime.
• Upgrade SQL Server 2017 to a newer version and recommend whether to stay self‑managed on EC2 or migrate to AWS RDS.
• Own administration, operation and optimisation of all relational databases (SQL Server and MySQL), including performance tuning, security, backup, DR testing and cost management.
• Define and enforce database standards, act as technical authority on schema and data‑access design, and drive data observability, monitoring and capacity forecasting.

Required profile

• 7+ years of professional experience with deep Microsoft SQL Server administration.
• Hands‑on experience installing and configuring SQL Server on self‑managed servers (EC2 or on‑premise) and performing OS‑level work.
• Recent end‑to‑end SQL Server upgrade (source/target versions, in‑place or side‑by‑side, with Windows Server version pairing).
• Experience with Windows Server administration, high‑availability (Always On Availability Groups, failover clustering) and MySQL administration.
• Proficiency with AWS services (EC2, RDS, S3, IAM, CloudWatch) and strong communication skills in English.

Required skills

• Microsoft SQL Server (installation, configuration, upgrade, Always On Availability Groups, failover clustering).
• Windows Server (OS upgrades, migrations).
• MySQL administration.
• AWS EC2, RDS, S3, IAM, CloudWatch.
• Performance tuning, backup & recovery, disaster‑recovery testing, security and access management.
• Data standards, schema design, data‑access design, monitoring and alerting.
• AI tools (e.g., Claude) for daily work.
• Nice‑to‑have: Snowflake, dbt, Rivery, Metabase, QuickSight, ETL pipelines, data‑warehouse and data‑lake design.