Senior Database Administrator (SQL/PostgreSQL)

Senior Database Administrator (SQL/PostgreSQL)We are located near Richmond, Virginia and we are a well-established and reputable insurance company. We have been innovating the insurance industry for over 20 years and have become one of the most well-known and widely used companies in our space. We work with the latest/greatest technology and greatly value a good work-life balance and collaborative environment. Position OverviewWe are seeking a Senior Database Administrator with deep expertise in SQL and PostgreSQL to join our platform team. The role is responsible for designing, implementing, and maintaining highly available, secure, and performant database systems supporting production and development environments. You will lead database lifecycle management, backups and disaster recovery, performance tuning, automation of CI/CD pipelines for schema and data changes, and mentor junior DBAs and engineers to improve operational excellence.Key ResponsibilitiesDesign, implement and maintain PostgreSQL and SQL Server databases to meet availability, scalability and security requirements.Manage backup and restore strategies, verify recoverability, and execute disaster recovery and failover procedures.Perform performance tuning and query optimization, including index strategy, execution plan analysis and resource utilization monitoring.Implement and operate high-availability and replication solutions (clustering, streaming replication, failover orchestration).Develop and maintain automation for provisioning, configuration, schema migrations and deployments using CI/CD tools and database migration frameworks.Create and maintain monitoring, alerting and capacity planning practices to proactively identify and remediate issues.Collaborate with application, infrastructure and security teams to support deployments, incident response, and security hardening.Author and maintain runbooks, documentation, and playbooks for operations, backup/recovery, and change management.Drive database change management and deployment processes (code reviews, rollback strategies, release coordination) to minimize risk to production systems.Mentor and train junior DBAs and engineers on best practices, troubleshooting and operational procedures.Qualifications5+ years of professional database administration experience, including significant hands-on experience with PostgreSQL and SQL.Expert-level SQL skills and deep understanding of database internals, indexing, query execution plans and performance optimization.Proven experience managing backup, restore and disaster recovery strategies and testing recoverability.Experience implementing and operating CI/CD for database deployments and schema migrations.Strong experience with PostgreSQL features (roles, extensions, WAL, replication, partitioning, vacuuming/autovacuum tuning).Proficient with monitoring and observability tools (e.g., PgBouncer, Patroni, Prometheus, Grafana, or equivalent).Solid scripting and automation skills (recommended: Python and/or PowerShell) to build operational tooling and runbooks.Familiarity with cloud platforms and services (Azure preferred) and experience operating databases in cloud and hybrid environments.Experience with high availability, failover, clustering, and replication technologies.Nice to have: hands-on experience with RedGate, Flyway, Octopus Deploy, Kubernetes and Docker, and general DBA toolsets.Strong communication, documentation and cross-functional collaboration skills; experience mentoring peers.Bachelors degree in Computer Science or related field, or equivalent practical experience; relevant certifications are a plus.BenefitsVacation/PTOMedicalDentalVision401kRemote