Senior Database Administrator (DBA) - SC Cleared

Senior Database Administrator (DBA)

Location: London/Croydon
Sector: Public Sector
Contract: Contractor
Clearance: Active SC required
Nationality: No specific nationality requirement stated

Role Overview

We are seeking a highly experienced Senior Database Administrator (DBA) with deep expertise in AWS Aurora, Amazon RDS and PostgreSQL .

The successful candidate will act as a senior database subject matter expert, combining hands-on technical delivery with architecture and technical leadership.

You will be responsible for the design, operation, optimisation, resilience and recovery of critical database platforms, while contributing to architecture decisions, database design, performance tuning, data reconciliation and operational support.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead the architecture, design and implementation of enterprise database solutions on AWS.

• Design and maintain database schemas, data models, indexing strategies and database standards.

• Design and implement highly available and resilient database platforms.

• Drive database resilience, high availability, disaster recovery and business continuity capabilities.

• Define, implement and test backup, recovery, failover and disaster recovery processes.

• Participate in architecture reviews, technical governance and design authority decisions.

• Optimise database performance through query tuning, execution plan analysis, indexing and configuration improvements.

• Troubleshoot and resolve complex production database issues.

• Perform data reconciliation, integrity validation and root-cause analysis of data discrepancies.

• Manage database upgrades, patching, security, monitoring and capacity management.

• Work closely with architects, developers, cloud engineers and operational teams.

• Deliver scalable, secure and resilient database solutions.

• Produce and maintain technical documentation, standards and operational procedures.

• Provide technical leadership and act as a recognised database SME.

Essential Technical Skills

• AWS Aurora - expert level

• Amazon RDS - expert level

• PostgreSQL - expert level

• Strong database architecture and solution design experience.

• Extensive SQL development experience.

• Advanced query optimisation and performance tuning.

• Strong knowledge of database schema design, indexing and data modelling.

• Experience with database backup, recovery, replication and failover.

• Strong disaster recovery and business continuity experience.

• Hands-on experience troubleshooting large-scale production database environments.

• Experience leading data reconciliation and data-quality activities.

• Strong knowledge of AWS services, including:

  • IAM

  • CloudWatch

  • KMS

  • VPC

  • Secrets Manager

• Experience with Infrastructure as Code, particularly Terraform and/or CloudFormation.

• Experience with CI/CD practices.

• Strong stakeholder management, communication and technical leadership skills.

Desirable Experience

• AWS Database Specialty certification.

• AWS Solutions Architect certification.

• Experience with:

  • MySQL

  • SQL Server

  • MongoDB

  • Redis

• Experience working within highly regulated or public-sector environments.

Candidate Profile

The successful candidate will be a recognised database SME who combines strategic architecture leadership with strong hands-on technical delivery.

You will be expected to drive resilience and recovery capabilities, influence architecture decisions and ensure database platforms are secure, scalable, performant and operationally robust.

Security Requirements

• Active SC clearance is required.

• The clearance should be:

  • An active SC with a government agency used within the last 6 months, or

  • Home Office SC .

• Additional security vetting may extend the onboarding process.

Working Arrangement

London/Croydon, with remote working available.