Senior Database Specialist

Skipton Building Society Group; United Kingdom; Hybrid; GBP 85,000 - 120,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Annual discretionary bonus

25 days annual leave

Employer pension contributions

Private medical insurance

Flexible working

Employee perks (discounts)

Job summary

Skipton Building Society Group is seeking a Senior Database Engineer to design and evolve our enterprise database platforms across on-premises and cloud environments. You will help shape standards, drive automation and improve platform resilience.

You'll mentor engineers, participate in on-call rotations and collaborate with architecture and delivery teams to ensure secure, scalable data services that meet business needs.

Qualifications

• Extensive experience administering enterprise database platforms (MS SQL Server, Azure SQL, Managed Instance).
• Strong knowledge of DB architecture, performance tuning, high availability and DR.
• Experience automating DB tasks with PowerShell, Python or SQL scripts.

Responsibilities

• Design, deploy and evolve highly available, secure database platforms.
• Shape architecture, standards and practices to meet business needs.
• Lead automation in deployment pipelines and tooling.

Skills

SQL Server

Azure SQL/Managed Instance

Database performance tuning

Automation scripting

Infrastructure as Code

CI/CD

Cloud platforms

Monitoring/observability

Mentoring

On-call support

Education

Bachelor's degree in CS or related

Tools

PowerShell

Python

SQL scripting

Terraform

Azure DevOps

Job description

Hours: Full time Hybrid Working Closing Date: Mon, 21 Sept 2026 As we continue to modernise and transform our digital services, we have an exciting opportunity for a Senior Database Engineer with a proven track record of designing, administering and evolving business-critical database platforms. As a Senior Database Engineer, you will be part of a supportive and highly skilled platform team responsible for delivering secure, resilient and automated database services across our technology estate. You will bring deep technical expertise across database technologies, operational excellence, automation and platform engineering practices, helping to ensure our data services remain reliable, scalable, secure and cost-effective. Using your experience and knowledge from both internal and external sources, you will support and mentor other engineers, establish best practices, and drive continuous improvement across our database platforms. You will play a key role in shaping the future direction of our database and data platform capabilities, ensuring they meet the evolving needs of the organisation while maintaining high standards of governance, performance and operational resilience. At Skipton, we're founded on fairness. We exist to do right by our members - and we believe that starts with doing right by our people. So whoever you are and whatever you bring, there's a place for you here and a genuine plan for where you go next.

What You’ll Do

• Designing, deploying and evolving highly available, secure and scalable database platforms.
• Shaping database architecture, standards and engineering practices to support current and future business needs.
• Leading improvements in database automation, infrastructure as code, deployment pipelines and operational tooling.
• Driving platform reliability through proactive monitoring, performance optimisation, capacity management and resilience testing.
• Investigating and resolving complex database incidents, conducting root cause analysis and implementing preventative measures.
• Establishing and maintaining database governance, security controls, backup, recovery and disaster recovery capabilities.
• Working closely with engineering, architecture and delivery teams to ensure data platforms are easy to consume, operate and support.
• Mentoring Database Engineers and other technical colleagues, sharing knowledge and coaching best practices.
• Participation in a rotating on-call schedule, acting as an escalation point for critical platform incidents and contributing to the operational excellence and resilience of our cloud services.
• Contributing to communities of practice and helping raise engineering maturity across the organisation.
• Identifying opportunities to reduce operational overhead through automation, standardisation and continuous improvement initiatives.

What You’ll Need

• Extensive experience administering enterprise database platforms such as Microsoft SQL Server, Azure SQL, Managed Instance or similar technologies.
• Strong understanding of database architecture, performance tuning, high availability and disaster recovery.
• Experience designing and implementing backup, restore and business continuity solutions.
• Proven ability to automate database administration tasks using PowerShell, Python, SQL scripting or similar technologies.
• Experience implementing Infrastructure as Code and database deployment automation.
• Strong troubleshooting and problem-solving skills with the ability to manage complex technical incidents.
• Knowledge of database security principles, governance controls and regulatory requirements.
• Ability to balance technical excellence with pragmatic business outcomes.
• Experience mentoring and supporting engineers and technical teams.
• Ideally experience with Azure data services, including Azure SQL, Managed Instance, Cosmos DB or Azure PostgreSQL, or other cloud environments.
• Familiarity with DevOps practices, CI/CD pipelines and modern engineering methodologies.
• Experience with monitoring and observability platforms.
• Knowledge of data platform technologies, analytics services or data engineering practices.

What’s In It For You

• Your work matters. And the way we reward you matters, too. At Skipton, we offer pay and benefits that really do make life better, together with a genuine thank you for making a difference.
• Annual discretionary bonus scheme
• 25 days standard annual leave + bank holidays + rising 1 day per year of service to a max of 30 days
• Matching employer pension contribution (up to 10% per annum)
• Colleague Mortgages and access to Skipton products and services at discounted rates
• Flexible working to help balance your commitments
• Private medical insurance, health and wellbeing app, volunteering opportunities, cycle-to-work scheme, discounted gym memberships
• Lifestyle perks such as a Home and Tech voucher, which can be used at John Lewis, Currys, and IKEA

About Skipton

Our story began in 1853 in Skipton, North Yorkshire. Today, you’ll find us across England and Scotland, from Aberdeen to Plymouth. We help over a million members put down roots, save for what matters, and feel good about their money. As a mutual, they own us, so everything we do is for them. You'll feel that same fairness and purpose in how all 2,500 of our colleagues work together, too It all means that life at Skipton is more exciting than you imagine.

What it’s like to work here

We talk and we listen to each other. And we make decisions as a team. That way, you get all the support you need to do work that works for everyone. For most of our roles there's the option of blended working, which means we mix working from home and meeting in person. The right balance depends on your role, and what works best for you, your manager, and your team. We also value what everyone brings to Skipton. And we create a fair place where you can be yourself. Our colleague networks play a big role in this. They connect people with similar life experiences and make our workplace warm, friendly, inclusive and welcoming. It’s not just our members who are important to us. You are, too. Lots of organisations talk about wellbeing, but they don’t always back it up. As a mutual, we put people first. And that includes the people who work here. So, when we say we care about your wellbeing, we mean it. Wellbeing isn't just one thing. It’s about feeling good, having energy, and being able to be yourself and perform at your best. That’s why we offer help for your mental and physical health across five key areas. What’s more, it’s help that you can actually use too - not just read about.

You don't need to tick every box - we look for people who care about our members and who want to grow at the same time. The rest can follow. Not just another building society. Not just another job. We're the fourth biggest building society in the UK and what makes us a bit different is that we're a mutual organisation. We don't have shareholders; we're owned by our members. Our colleagues say Skipton's a great place to work, and you could be one of them, bringing with you new ideas on how we can keep customers at the heart of what we do.