Senior SQL Server Developer

Creative Recruitment; Oxford; A distancia; GBP 60.000 - 90.000; Jornada completa

Descripción de la vacante

Creative Recruitment seeks a Senior SQL Server Developer to design, optimize, and lead high-performance database solutions in a fully remote role with occasional Oxford office visits. You will own complex T-SQL objects, implement efficient indexing strategies, and collaborate across globally distributed teams to deliver scalable data platforms.

Candidates should bring 8+ years of SQL Server experience, strong performance tuning skills, and familiarity with CI/CD tools like TeamCity, Git, and

Formación

• 8+ years of hands-on SQL Server experience (SQL Server 2016 or later).
• Strong experience writing and optimizing advanced queries, stored procedures, functions, and views.
• Excellent performance tuning and indexing knowledge to optimise all database code paths.
• Experience using execution plans to improve code execution.
• Understanding of concurrency and locking for optimal performance.
• Experience with SSIS and data integration concepts.
• Knowledge of security best practices for databases.
• Familiarity with CI/CD tools (TeamCity).
• Experience with Git for source control.
• Experience with cloud and IaC tools (Terraform, AWS, or Azure).
• Experience with logging tools (Elasticsearch, Rollbar, Sentry).
• Strong communication within internationally distributed teams.

Responsabilidades

• Design, develop, and optimise high-availability database solutions.
• Own database performance including indexing, query tuning, and execution plans.
• Lead root-cause analysis for performance issues and outages.
• Collaborate with dev, architecture, and DevOps to deliver robust backend systems.
• Guide less-experienced team members and share SQL Server expertise.
• Contribute to schema design, capacity planning, and lifecycle management.

Conocimientos

8+ years SQL Server experience

T-SQL optimization

Query tuning

Indexing strategies

Performance bottleneck analysis

Elastic Stack / ELK basics

CI/CD with TeamCity

Git source control

Azure/AWS cloud familiarity

Data architecture & modeling

Herramientas

SSIS

Kafka

Service Broker & queues

Terraform

Sentry/Rollbar/Elasticsearch

Cloudflare

Scripting (PowerShell/Python)

Descripción del empleo

Location: Fully remote - going into the Oxford office when required

The Role

We are seeking an exceptional Senior SQL Server Developer with deep expertise in building high-performance, scalable, and mission-critical database solutions. This role is ideal for someone who lives and breathes SQL Server, understands data at a granular level, and can solve complex database challenges with elegance and precision whilst ensuring high level performance and best

practices.

While SQL Server mastery is the core requirement, experience with .NET (C#, ASP.NET, EF, or related frameworks) is a strong advantage. You will have the opportunity to work on large-scale, performance-heavy systems in a collaborative engineering culture where technical excellence is valued.

As an experienced developer you will have worked on a variety of highly available applications and have experience with high volume databases. You will be confident collaborating with engineering teams around the world to design and launch ground-breaking features.

You will have the experience and knowledge to make sound technology decisions and participate in architecture discussions, advocating best practices across the teams you work with. You will act as an example and data leader for less data experienced team members to learn from and have an ability to communicate at all levels with technical and non-technical stakeholders.

You will be a highly analytical and detail oriented individual comfortable with tools such as Elastic Search, Rollbar, Jira etc as well as having a propensity for learning and enhancing your skillset, with a mindset tuned to understand root-causes. As a database expert, you will have extensive experience in, and thrive in, designing, developing, and optimising complex T-SQL stored procedures, functions, views, and triggers. You will own the database performance, including indexing strategies, query tuning, execution plan analysis, statistics, partitioning etc. and so will take pride in producing clean, efficient and maintainable code.

You will collaborate with software developers, architects, and DevOps to deliver robust, efficient backend systems. You will be expected to have deep experience of conducting root-cause analysis on performance bottlenecks and database-related production issues, ensuring data integrity, security, compliance, and efficient resource utilisation. You will, as a part of the development team, participate in schema design, capacity planning, and database lifecycle management.

Your experience will mean that less experienced developers will look to you for guidance as a subject-matter expert for SQL Server.

Skills Required

• 8+ years of hands-on SQL Server experience (SQL Server 2016 or later).
• Strong and demonstrable experience writing and optimising advanced queries, stored procedures, functions, tables, etc.
• Excellent experience in tuning and optimising performance to ensure all database code paths are optimal and performant.
• Experience in using execution plans to understand and improve code execution.
• Thorough comprehension of indexing strategies, concurrency and locking to ensure optimal performance.
• Broad understanding and experience with SSIS
• Understanding of service brokers and message queues (SSSB, Kafka etc)
• Knowledge of database security and roles, as well as security and database best practices.
• Working knowledge of CI/CD tools (TeamCity)
• Solid experience working with source control platforms and tools such as GIT.
• Experience with Cloudflare, AWS, Terraform (nice to have)
• Writing database specific unit tests experience with .NET (C#, ASP.NET, EF, or related frameworks) (nice to have)
• Experience with logging tools (Elasticsearch, Rollbar Sentry)
• Great communication skills as a core member of an internationally-based team;
• Passion for data and databases with a desire to remain up to date with the latest skills;
• Experience working on high-traffic 24/7, performant data backed systems.
• Experience with Agile methodologies (Sprints, Scrum, Stand-Ups)