Lead Database Administrator

Betfred; Manchester; On-site; GBP 80,000 - 95,000; Full time

Job summary

A leading gaming company in Manchester seeks a Lead DBA to own the architecture and operations of their database platforms. The ideal candidate will have extensive experience with relational and non-relational databases and will be responsible for ensuring the scalability, security, and performance of the database infrastructure. This role includes mentoring the DBA team and leading continuous improvement efforts. The position offers a competitive salary package ranging from £80,000 to £95,000, along with generous benefits.

Benefits

Competitive salary and pension contribution

Generous discretionary bonus schemes

Increasing annual leave entitlement

24/7 access to an online GP

Employee wellbeing support

Enhanced Maternity & Paternity Pay

Pay day savings scheme through Wagestream

Qualifications

• Strong experience across relational and non-relational platforms.
• Deep expertise in high availability, replication, clustering and disaster recovery.
• Strong Linux administration and advanced scripting skills.
• Proven ability to solve complex performance issues.
• Strong understanding of security, compliance, and governance.
• Experience leading teams and defining standards.
• Hands-on experience with CI/CD, automation and Infrastructure as Code.

Responsibilities

• Lead the design and maintenance of highly available, fault-tolerant database infrastructure.
• Plan for growth and scalability aligned with business and platform needs.
• Evaluate and integrate emerging database technologies.
• Ensure compliance with security and regulatory requirements.
• Manage resource utilisation across storage, compute, memory and networking.
• Implement and validate replication and disaster recovery strategies.
• Monitor database health, capacity and performance.
• Collaborate with developers to optimise schema design and queries.
• Build and maintain CI/CD and automation pipelines.
• Troubleshoot complex database and application issues.

Skills

Strong experience across relational and non-relational platforms (MariaDB, MySQL, MongoDB)

Deep expertise in HA, replication, clustering and DR

Strong Linux administration and advanced scripting skills

Proven ability to solve complex performance issues

Strong understanding of security, compliance and governance

Experience leading teams and defining standards

Hands-on experience with CI/CD, automation and IaC (Ansible, Terraform)

Job description

About Us

Our mission is to dominate the betting and gaming industry on a global scale and we need the very best Tech talent to help us achieve this.

We recently migrated all of our customers onto our very own proprietary platform - so it's an exciting time to join us. With the help of our new platform, we're able to pioneer new products and drive more advanced, creative technologies. The result? Unrivalled experiences for millions of customers worldwide.

Betfred's Technology department is driven by innovation, and you'll be at the heart of unlocking our new platform's potential. So, if you want to help shape the future of betting and gaming, then it's to time to join us.

Job Purpose

The Lead DBA owns the architecture, operations and strategic direction of the database platforms. The role spans infrastructure, application and reliability engineering disciplines ensuring environments are secure, scalable and performant. The Lead DBA works closely with the Engineering Manager, architects and engineering teams to define standards, guide technical decisions and mentor the DBA team. This role is both strategic and hands‑on delivering business‑critical database services.

Job Duties

Lead the design and maintenance of highly available, fault‑tolerant database infrastructure.

Plan for growth and scalability aligned with business and platform needs.

Evaluate and integrate emerging database technologies to improve performance and efficiency.

Ensure compliance with security, governance and regulatory requirements.

Manage resource utilisation across storage, compute, memory and networking.

Implement and validate replication, clustering and disaster recovery strategies.

Apply patches, upgrades and security hardening.

Monitor database health, capacity and performance proactively.

Collaborate with developers to optimise schema design, indexing and queries.

Support deployments, migrations and application‑aligned changes.

Maintain data integrity and resilience across all workloads.

Troubleshoot complex database and application‑facing issues.

Build and maintain CI / CD and automation pipelines.

Automate routine operations including backups, restores and patching.

Identify and remediate platform risks and points of failure.

Partner with DevOps, SRE and platform teams on operational maturity.

Define and enforce operational standards and best practices.

Mentor Senior and Junior DBAs.

Drive continuous improvement across database operations and tooling.

Knowledge, Skills and Experience

Essential

Strong experience across relational and non‑relational platforms (MariaDB, MySQL, MongoDB, .

Deep expertise in HA, replication, clustering and DR.

Strong Linux administration and advanced scripting skills.

Proven ability to solve complex performance issues.

Strong understanding of security, compliance and governance.

Experience leading teams and defining standards.

Hands‑on experience with CI / CD, automation and IaC (Ansible, Terraform).

Desirables

Experience with cloud or hybrid database platforms.

Familiarity with modern observability tooling.

Knowledge of sharding, partitioning and scale‑out strategies.

Experience supporting application performance and database integration.

What’s in it for you?

• A competitive rate of pay and pension contribution (£80,000 - £95,000)
• Generous discretionary bonus schemes, incentives and competitions
• An annual leave entitlement that increases with length of service
• Access to an online GP 24 / 7, 365 days a year for you and your immediate family.
• Employee wellbeing support through our Employee Assistance Programme
• Enhanced Maternity & Paternity Pay

Long Service Recognition

Access to a pay day savings scheme, financial coach and up to 40% of your earned wage ahead of payday, through Wagestream.

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