Senior Database Administrator

Senior Database Administrator

Hiring Department: Enterprise Technology - Data to Insights (D2I)

Position Open To: All Applicants

Weekly Scheduled Hours: 40

FLSA Status: Exempt from FLSA

Earliest Start Date: Immediately

Position Duration: Expected to Continue

Location: Texas

General Notes

Flexible work arrangements are available for this position, including the ability to work 100% remotely. Remote work for individuals who reside outside Texas but within the United States and its territories will be considered and requires Central Office approval.

This position provides life/work balance with typically a 40-hour work week and travel limited to training (e.g., conferences/courses).

Enterprise Technology is dedicated to supporting the mission of the University of Texas at Austin of unlocking potential and preparing future leaders of the state.

Your skills will make a difference.

You'll be working for a university that is internationally recognized for research and the work you do will make a difference in the lives of our students, faculty and staff. If you're the type of person that wants to know your work has meaning and impact, you'll like working for our campus.

The University of Texas at Austin and Enterprise Technology provide an outstanding benefits package to our staff. Those benefits include:

• Competitive health benefits (Employee premiums covered at 100%; family premiums at 50%)
• Vision, dental, life, and disability insurance options
• Paid vacation, sick leave, and holidays
• Teachers Retirement System of Texas (a defined benefit retirement plan)
• Additional voluntary retirement programs: tax sheltered annuity 403(b) and a deferred compensation program 457(b)
• Flexible spending account options for medical and childcare expenses
• Training and conference opportunities
• Tuition assistance
• Athletic ticket discounts
• Access to UT Austin's libraries and museums
• Free rides on all UT Shuttle and Capital Metro buses with staff ID card

Must be authorized to work in the United States on a full-time basis for any employer without sponsorship.

This position requires you to maintain internet service and a mobile phone with voice and data plans to be used when required for work.

Purpose

The Senior Database Administrator for the UT Data Hub improves university outcomes and advances the UT mission to transform lives for the benefit of society by increasing the usability and value of institutional data. The position builds and maintains cloud database infrastructure and automates database processes for the UT data ecosystem. It covers database and system administration across Oracle, PostgreSQL, and Databricks, and devises optimal database configurations to meet university needs for high-performance data systems and ensures compliance with UT information security requirements. The role requires strong troubleshooting skills and the ability to build effective working relationships across technical and non-technical teams. Main tech stacks include: Databricks, AWS, Cognos, Oracle, PostgreSQL, and Tableau.

Responsibilities

Cloud Database Administration:

• Contribute to all day-to-day operations of PostgreSQL databases in a 24x7 production environment.
• Demonstrate progressive troubleshooting and analytical skills through timely problem resolution.
• Define database architectures to meet application performance and security requirements.
• Implement tuning improvements and advise developers on SQL tuning options.
• Provide technical guidance on integration, design and testing on production system databases.
• Develop process for Performance Monitoring of database servers and individual databases.
• Develop, implement and improve backup and disaster recovery strategies.
• Develop and implement high availability solutions.
• Perform PostgreSQL server updates, upgrades and installations.
• Demonstrate an ability to write SQL scripts and stored procedures.
• Advise teams on best practices for database deployment and management.
• Collaborate with support teams on various IT projects.
• Contribute to improving and creating database application processes and procedures.
• Participate in on-call rotation

Systems Administration:

• Provide Windows and Linux system administration as needed for database applications.
• Configure and maintain (including patching) legacy Oracle database instances.
• Participate in change management processes to coordinate and communicate systems administration activity.

AWS & Databricks Platform Administration:

• Hands-on administration of AWS services supporting database workloads (RDS, S3, EC2, IAM, VPC)
• Databricks workspace administration including cluster management, access controls, and Unity Catalog
• Experience with dbt (Data Build Tool)
• Use Infrastructure as Code tools, specifically AWS CDK and Terraform, to provision and manage database infrastructure
• Set up and maintain database monitoring and alerting using AWS CloudWatch or equivalent tools

Other Responsibilities:

• Communicate status of activities and findings through verbal, written, and/or visual reporting
• Support credential and secrets management practices in alignment with team security standards
• Other related functions as assigned

Required Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, Engineering, or equivalent professional experience.
• Average of 4-10 years of professional experience in a DBA role with PostgreSQL or similar databases.
• Experience in SQL scripting and database tuning.
• Skilled at database design, installation, migration and conversion.
• Experience with Databricks and AWS administration is also a requirement for this position.
• Demonstrated experience with automation of database processes.
• Strong aptitude for troubleshooting and problem solving.
• Team player, comfortable communicating cross-functionally and across management levels.
• Self-motivated and able to organize work independently in a rapidly changing environment.
• U.S. Citizen, resident, or officially recognized asylee - Applicant selected will be subject to government security investigation and must meet eligibility requirements for access to classified information at the level appropriate to the project requirements of the position.

Equivalent combination of relevant education and experience may be substituted as appropriate.

Preferred Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree with three years of experience with automation of cloud-based workloads.
• Four years of experience working in a cloud-based data warehouse environment.
• Four years of DBA experience with Amazon Web Services and Databricks.
• Experience with multiple types of databases.
• Experience with high availability database implementations.
• Experience with Windows and Linux system administration.
• Basic networking knowledge as it relates to database systems.
• Experience with implementing and maintaining database infrastructure to support all aspects of the software development cycle (SDLC).
• AWS/Databricks certification is a strong plus.
• Strong knowledge of Quality Assurance processes, test case development and execution.
• Knowledge of Agile software development methodologies (Kanban, Scrum).
• Experience with issue tracking systems (JIRA).

Salary Range

$105,000 + depending on qualifications

Working Conditions

• May work around standard office conditions
• Repetitive use of a keyboard at a workstation
• Use of manual dexterity (ex: using a mouse)
• Up to 100% remote at employee discretion with office work environment is also an option. Majority of team is located in Austin, TX, and working remotely with infrequent in-office presence.

Work Shift

• Monday – Friday 8am-5pm; Occasional nights or weekends may be required

Required Materials

• Resume/CV
• 3 work references with their contact information; at least one reference should be from a supervisor
• Letter of interest