Senior Database Administrator

Ocean Red; Greater London; On-site; GBP 90,000 - 120,000; Full time

Job summary

Ocean Red is seeking a hands-on Associate Director DBA to own a diverse database estate behind latency‑sensitive, regulated production systems. You will be responsible for reliability, performance and resilience, with autonomy while collaborating with engineers and operators who rely on these systems.

You will manage MySQL tuning, replication, and user access, contribute to safer schema changes, and drive backups, PITR testing and operational visibility through Grafana.

Qualifications

• Must have worked as a DBA in production where uptime mattered.
• Strong MySQL skills in installation, replication, and tuning.
• Proficiency with PostgreSQL concepts including query planning and indexing.
• Fluent in Linux and command-line tooling.
• Able to explain database behaviour clearly to non-specialists.

Responsibilities

• Own the database estate for latency-sensitive financial products.
• Tune MySQL including replication and user management.
• Advise on safer schema and query changes before production.
• Develop backup/restore strategies including PITR and test restores.
• Improve operational visibility via Grafana and alerting.
• Handle complex SQL for reporting and troubleshooting.

Skills

MySQL tuning

Replication

User management

PostgreSQL concepts

Linux CLI

Performance tuning

Query planning

Tools

Grafana

QuestDB

Dolt

Redis

Elasticsearch

Job description

A hands-on DBA hire at Associate Director level, owning a varied database estate behind low-latency, regulated production systems. Mature relational tooling in MySQL and PostgreSQL sits alongside genuinely specialist technology: QuestDB, Dolt, Redis, Elasticsearch. You get autonomy over how the estate is run without being the only person who understands it.

The work

You take ownership of the database estate underneath a set of business-critical, latency-sensitive financial technology products. This is a hands-on role, not an architecture-only one. Reliability, performance and resilience in production are the measure of it, and the engineering and operations teams who depend on those databases will feel the difference quickly. The environment is fast-moving and technical, and you will have real autonomy, but there are people around you who know the systems.

What you'll own

You become the person people come to when database performance, availability, access, backups, schema changes or query behaviour needs proper thought rather than a quick fix. The days vary.

• MySQL tuning, replication, configuration and user management across the estate
• Helping developers make safer schema and query changes before they reach production
• Backup and restore strategy, including point-in-time recovery, and testing restores so the recovery plan is more than a document
• Operational visibility: improving what Grafana shows and what the alerting actually catches
• Complex SQL for operational reporting, dashboards and troubleshooting

What you'll need

You have worked as a DBA, or in a database-focused infrastructure or engineering role, in a production environment where downtime mattered.

• Strong MySQL: installation, configuration, replication, performance tuning and user management
• Comfortable with PostgreSQL concepts, including query planning, indexing, roles and connection management
• A working grasp of backup and restore strategy and point-in-time recovery
• Fluent in Linux and command-line tooling
• Able to explain database behaviour clearly to developers, operations teams and people who are not specialists

What helps, but is not essential

The broader environment runs MySQL, PostgreSQL, QuestDB, Dolt, Redis, Elasticsearch, Linux, Grafana and the monitoring and alerting tooling around them. Nobody arrives knowing all of it.

• QuestDB, or a genuine interest in high-performance time-series workloads
• Grafana or comparable observability tooling
• Exposure to Redis, Elasticsearch, or version-controlled database systems such as Dolt
• Experience in a regulated financial services or compliance-driven environment

Interview process

CV review, then a screening call with me, submission, a first-stage video interview, a technical second stage, a final stage with senior stakeholders, and an offer.