Data Architect/DBA

Data Architect / DBA

Full Time Opportunity

5 days a week in NYC, NY

Position Summary

Seeking an experienced Data Architect / DBA to reverse engineer, optimize, and modernize complex database environments. The role requires the ability to analyze undocumented database instances, infer business logic from schema structures and production-representative data, reconstruct ER models, and redesign architectures for maximum query efficiency, scalability, and maintainability. Candidate must also be able to read and understand Java services that interact with and maintain the database schema, including ORM mappings and transactional behavior.

Key Responsibilities

• Reverse engineer database schemas, including tables, indexes, constraints, views, stored procedures, functions, and triggers.
• Analyze representative production data to identify entities, relationships, cardinality, workflows, and usage patterns.
• Reconstruct logical and physical ER models and document current-state architectures.
• Read and analyze Java application/services code to understand:
• Database access patterns
• ORM mappings
• Transaction logic
• Schema maintenance behavior
• Redesign schemas and data models for:
• Efficient joins
• Query optimization
• Scalability
• Data integrity
• Maintainability
• Optimize SQL, execution plans, indexing, partitioning, and storage strategies.
• Administer enterprise databases including backup/recovery, replication, HA/DR, security, monitoring, upgrades, and migrations.
• Produce technical documentation, ERDs, migration plans, and architecture recommendations.
• Collaborate with engineering and infrastructure teams on database and application performance improvements.

Required Qualifications

• 5+ years of experience in database administration, data architecture, or related roles.
• Strong expertise in relational database design, SQL optimization, and performance tuning.
• Proven experience reverse engineering undocumented databases and legacy systems.
• Deep understanding of ER modeling, normalization, indexing, and join optimization.
• Ability to infer business logic from schemas, data, and application behavior.
• Read-level Java proficiency with the ability to understand:
• Spring / Spring Boot
• Hibernate / JPA
• JDBC
• Service-layer database interactions
• Experience with SQL Server, AWS RDS (Managed MS SQL Server) or similar DBMS platforms.
• Familiarity with schema versioning, CI/CD, cloud database platforms, and monitoring tools preferred.
• Strong analytical, investigative, and documentation skills.

Desired Attributes

• Strong systems-thinking and problem-solving abilities.
• Comfortable working independently with minimal documentation.
• Detail-oriented with a focus on performance and scalability.
• Effective communicator capable of translating technical findings into actionable architecture improvements.