Lead DBA (SQL / Azure / Postgres)

Vaco Recruiter Services; Mount Airy (NC); On-site; USD 120,000 - 160,000; Full time

Job summary

Vaco Recruiter Services in Charlotte, NC seeks an experienced Lead Database Administrator to own and evolve a growing enterprise database environment, spanning on-premise and cloud. The role is hands-on with technical leadership across Production and Development DBA duties and will drive the migration to Microsoft Azure while preserving performance, security, and availability.

The ideal candidate has deep Microsoft SQL Server expertise, plus Azure database technologies, PostgreSQL, and DBaaS.

Qualifications

• Strong experience with Microsoft SQL Server administration and Production DBA duties in highly available environments.
• Experience collaborating with development teams on SQL deployments, performance tuning, and troubleshooting.
• Experience migrating on-premise databases to Microsoft Azure and related DBaaS/Paas platforms.

Responsibilities

• Serve as the technical lead and SME for the organization's database platforms.
• Support both Production DBA and Development DBA responsibilities across critical applications.
• Manage, monitor, tune, and troubleshoot Microsoft SQL Server environments.

Skills

Microsoft SQL Server administration

Production DBA

Development DBA

SQL performance tuning

Backup/Recovery/HA

Azure database technologies

Azure SQL Database

PostgreSQL administration

Cloud DBaaS/Paas

Automation/Scripting

Job description

On-site 5 days a week in South Charlotte

W2 only- direct placement/full time (no sponsorship)

Position Overview

We are seeking an experienced Lead Database Administrator (DBA) to own and evolve a growing enterprise database environment. This is a hands-on technical leadership role for someone who has strong experience across both Production and Development DBA responsibilities and is comfortable working across traditional on-premise infrastructure and modern cloud database platforms.

A major focus of this position will be helping drive the organization's continued transition from on-premise database environments into Microsoft Azure, while maintaining the performance, security, reliability, and availability of existing production systems.

The ideal candidate brings deep Microsoft SQL Server expertise along with experience in Azure database technologies, PostgreSQL, and Database-as-a-Service (DBaaS/SaaS) environments.

Key Responsibilities

• Serve as the technical lead and subject matter expert for the organization's database platforms.
• Support both Production DBA and Development DBA responsibilities across business-critical applications.
• Manage, monitor, tune, and troubleshoot Microsoft SQL Server environments.
• Partner with application and development teams on database design, SQL development, deployments, performance optimization, and troubleshooting.
• Help lead the migration and modernization of database workloads from on-premise infrastructure to Microsoft Azure.
• Evaluate and implement appropriate Azure database services, including Azure SQL Database, Azure SQL Managed Instance, SQL Server on Azure VMs, and related PaaS/DBaaS solutions.
• Administer and support PostgreSQL environments, including cloud-hosted PostgreSQL platforms.
• Develop and maintain database backup, recovery, high availability, disaster recovery, and business continuity strategies.
• Monitor database health, capacity, performance, security, and availability.
• Troubleshoot complex production database issues and perform root-cause analysis.
• Establish database standards, documentation, security practices, and operational procedures.
• Assist with database upgrades, migrations, patching, automation, and modernization initiatives.
• Work closely with infrastructure, cloud, security, application development, and business teams.
• Provide technical leadership and mentorship to other database and technology resources.

What We’re Looking For

Strong experience with:

• Microsoft SQL Server administration
• Production DBA responsibilities in highly available environments
• Development DBA responsibilities and working directly with software/application development teams
• SQL performance tuning, indexing, query optimization, and troubleshooting
• Backup, recovery, replication, clustering, and high availability
• Microsoft Azure database technologies
• On-premise to Azure/cloud database migrations
• Azure SQL Database and/or Azure SQL Managed Instance
• PostgreSQL administration
• Cloud-hosted database platforms and DBaaS/PaaS database models
• Database security, access management, monitoring, and governance
• Automation and scripting using PowerShell, T-SQL, Python, or similar technologies

Ideal Background

We are particularly interested in candidates who have worked in environments where they have had to wear multiple hats — someone who can keep a mission-critical production database environment running while also partnering with developers and helping architect the organization's future cloud database strategy.

This is not a purely managerial DBA position. The successful candidate should still enjoy being hands-on technically and be comfortable moving between production support, development initiatives, performance tuning, architecture, migrations, and cloud modernization.

By submitting to this position, you are agreeing to be included in our talent pool for future hiring for similarly qualified positions.