Database Platform Manager

This role leads the team responsible for keeping enterprise database platforms reliable, secure, performant, and ready for growth. The Database Platform Manager owns day-to-day operational health across SQL Server, Postgres, Oracle, and related database services while also driving modernization, automation, monitoring, resiliency, and cloud-readiness efforts. This is a hands-on leadership role that blends technical depth, production ownership, people leadership, and true partnership with development and infrastructure engineering teams. Success in this role depends on working alongside those teams early and often, helping shape better application design, platform decisions, operational practices, and production outcomes.

Role Focus

• Own the operational stability, performance, capacity, resiliency, and support model for enterprise database platforms
• Work closely with development teams to improve how applications use database platforms, including schema design, query patterns, indexing strategy, transaction behavior, and release readiness
• Help identify and tune non-performant code, inefficient queries, database access patterns, and application behaviors that create production risk or recurring operational pain
• Lead database engineering work across production support, performance tuning, platform improvement, automation, monitoring, upgrades, migrations, and application enablement
• Translate business, application, and operational needs into practical database designs, standards, support processes, and execution plans
• Operate as a partner to development and infrastructure engineering groups, working side by side to resolve issues, deliver projects, reduce risk, improve performance, and strengthen service reliability
• Mentor database engineers and help build a culture of ownership, documentation, automation, and continuous improvement

Core Responsibilities

• Lead day-to-day database engineering operations, including incident response, request fulfillment, escalation support, and production troubleshooting.
• Design, review, and improve database solutions in partnership with development and infrastructure engineering teams so applications remain performant, available, secure, scalable, and maintainable
• Drive database performance tuning, query review, indexing strategy, capacity planning, and platform optimization in partnership with development and infrastructure engineering teams
• Own and mature backup, restore, disaster recovery, high availability, and lifecycle management practice
• Advance automation and repeatable deployment practices using scripting, configuration standards, and operational runbook
• Support database upgrades, patching, migrations, cloud initiatives, and modernization efforts across on-premises and cloud-hosted platform
• Work directly with application owners and development teams to identify bugs, tune non-performant code, reduce database-related bottlenecks, and improve release readiness
• Maintain practical documentation of database topology, support processes, standards, dependencies, recurring issues, and operational workflow
• Communicate clearly and consistently with development, infrastructure engineering, senior leadership, and technical stakeholders on operational status, project progress, performance findings, risks, decisions, and recommended next step

Requirements

• Typically, eight (8) years of hands-on database engineering, administration, or platform operations experience, with flexibility for candidates who have worked in highly complex, business-critical database environments
• Typically, two (2) years of technical leadership, team lead, or player-coach experience, with flexibility for candidates who have led technical work, mentored others, or guided cross-functional teams without having held a formal manager title
• Strong production experience with SQL Server, Postgres, and Oracle
• Strong SQL Server experience, including performance tuning, high availability, backup, recovery, optimization, and production support
• Ability to work hands-on with troubleshooting, query analysis, performance tuning, migrations, documentation, and root-cause investigation
• Experience helping development teams improve database usage, tune inefficient code, optimize queries, and reduce database-related application issues
• Strong scripting and automation skills across Windows and Linux, including PowerShell, shell scripting, and repeatable operational automation
• Experience working closely with development, infrastructure engineering, application support, storage, networking, monitoring, and operations teams
• Strong communication skills with the ability to explain technical findings, risks, tradeoffs, and recommendations clearly to technical and non-technical audiences
• Ability to coach engineers, review designs, set priorities, remove blockers, and stay close to the technical details
• Experience with database upgrades, patching, migrations, disaster recovery, high availability, and platform modernization
• Azure experience is helpful, especially with Azure SQL, Azure Database for PostgreSQL, Azure Virtual Machines, storage, networking, identity, and monitoring