Database Administrator

Planet Paymet; Galway; Hybrid; EUR 90,000 - 120,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Hybrid work model

Career progression

Job summary

Planet is seeking a skilled Azure SQL Database Administrator to join our Cloud & Infrastructure Services team. You will own configuration, reliability, performance, security, and lifecycle governance for Azure SQL estates across production and non-production environments.

You will leverage automatic patching, backups, high-availability, and intelligent performance features while applying strong SQL Server expertise for migration and troubleshooting. Hybrid work model offered.

Qualifications

• Hands-on experience administering Azure SQL Database and Azure SQL Managed Instance in production.
• Strong knowledge of Azure SQL deployment models, elastic pools, and service tiers.
• Experience with monitoring/observability platforms (Azure Monitor, Log Analytics, and related tools).

Responsibilities

• Administer, maintain, and support Azure SQL Database and Azure SQL Managed Instance across environments.
• Plan and execute migrations from on-premises SQL Server to Azure SQL Database/MI.
• Ensure security, compliance, and cost optimization for the Azure SQL estate.
• Monitor performance, troubleshoot queries, and optimise indexes and plans.
• Collaborate with security, application, and platform teams on deployment pipelines and DR.
• Ensure security with Entra authentication, private endpoints, encryption, and auditing.
• Plan and execute migrations from SQL Server to Azure SQL Database/Managed Instance.
• Drive cost optimisation with reservations, elastic pools, and serverless configurations.
• Collaborate with application, security, network, and platform teams on design and deployment.

Skills

Azure SQL Database

Azure SQL Managed Instance

SQL Server

T-SQL

Azure Monitor

Education

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science

Tools

Coralogix

Datadog

Grafana

Coralogix

Datadog

Grafana

Job description

About Planet

Planet Planet is a global provider of integrated technology and payments solutions for retail and hospitality customers. We create great experiences for the millions of people who use our payments, software, and tax-free solutions every minute of every day. Planet empowers its customers to deliver great customer experiences by combining payments and software in ways that drive greater loyalty, increase revenue and save time. Founded over 35 years ago and with our headquarters in London, today we have more than 2,500 employees located across six continents serving our customers in more than 120 markets.

Role Overview

We are seeking a highly skilled Azure SQL Database Administrator to join our Cloud & Infrastructure Services team. The role is primarily responsible for operating and optimising Azure SQL Database and Azure SQL Managed Instance as managed database services, supporting critical business applications across production and non-production environments. The successful candidate will own service configuration, reliability, performance, security, cost efficiency, monitoring, backup and recovery, business continuity, and lifecycle governance for the Azure SQL estate. The role will exploit platform-managed capabilities such as automated patching, backups, built-in high-availability, elastic scaling, and intelligent performance features, while retaining strong SQL Server expertise for compatibility assessment, migration, troubleshooting, and workload optimisation. Previous experience working within regulated industries (e.g., payments, financial services, PCI-DSS, healthcare, or other compliance-driven environments) is highly desirable.

What you will do

• Administer, maintain, and support Azure SQL Database, elastic pools, and Azure SQL Managed Instance across production and non-production environments.
• Select and right-size deployment models, service tiers, compute models, storage, and scaling options according to workload, availability, latency, and cost requirements.
• Implement business continuity using zone redundancy, automated backups, point-in-time restore, long-term retention, active geo-replication, and failover groups as appropriate.
• Monitor database health and performance using Azure Monitor, Log Analytics, Query Store, Query Performance Insight, dynamic management views, and enterprise observability tooling.
• Troubleshoot and optimise queries, indexes, execution plans, resource contention, blocking, deadlocks, storage, and connectivity.
• Secure services through Microsoft Entra authentication, managed identities, least-privilege access, private endpoints, network controls, encryption, auditing, vulnerability assessment, and Microsoft Defender for SQL.
• Plan and deliver migrations from SQL Server to Azure SQL Database or Azure SQL Managed Instance, including discovery, compatibility assessment, remediation, cutover, validation, and rollback planning.
• Drive cost optimisation through capacity reviews, reservations, Azure Hybrid Benefit where applicable, elastic pools, serverless configurations, and workload right-sizing.
• Collaborate with application, security, network, platform engineering, and service teams on database design, connectivity, deployment pipelines, reliability, and production readiness.
• Ensure compliance with security, audit, data-retention, and regulatory requirements, including PCI DSS controls.
• Maintain service standards, technical documentation, migration patterns, operational procedures, and recovery runbooks.

Who you are

• Strong hands-on experience administering Azure SQL Database and Azure SQL Managed Instance in production.
• Strong understanding of Azure SQL deployment models, logical servers, managed instances, elastic pools, vCore purchasing, General Purpose, Business Critical, Hyperscale, and serverless options.
• Experience designing high availability and disaster recovery with zone redundancy, failover groups, active geo-replication, automated backups, point-in-time restore, and long-term retention.
• Strong SQL Server engine knowledge, including T-SQL, Query Store, execution plans, indexing, statistics, blocking, deadlocks, and query optimisation.
• Experience with Azure Monitor, Log Analytics, diagnostic settings, alerts, and observability platforms such as Coralogix, Datadog, or Grafana.
• Knowledge of Microsoft Entra authentication, managed identities, Azure RBAC, database permissions, encryption, auditing, private endpoints, Private DNS, firewalls, and connectivity troubleshooting.
• Experience assessing and migrating SQL Server workloads to Azure SQL Database or Azure SQL Managed Instance, including compatibility and cutover planning.
• Experience operating production-critical database services and participating in incident, problem, change, and capacity management.
• Good understanding of PaaS shared-responsibility boundaries and the operational differences between Azure SQL services and self-managed SQL Server.

On-Call Requirements

This position supports business-critical production services. Participation in an on-call rotation is expected and candidates must be willing to provide out-of-hours support when required for incidents, maintenance activities, and service restorations.

Why Planet

Planet is an equal opportunity employer where diversity is valued, and all employment is decided based on qualifications, merit, and business need.

Come and grow your career in the most exciting, fast-paced technology market, with a business that delivers feel-good connected commerce.

At Planet, we embrace a hybrid work model, with three days a week in the office.

Reasonable accommodations may be made in order to allow for an individual to perform the essential functions of this role successfully.

Company Background

Planet provides integrated software, payment and technology solutions for its customers in the Hospitality and Retail sectors and worldwide via a network of global Financial Services Partners. Founded over 35 years ago, we have evolved our services, delivering an innovative digital commerce platform that puts customer experience first. With headquarters in London and around 3,000 expert employees located across six continents we serve customers in over 120 markets.