Principal Database Administrator

Cox Enterprises; Village of North Hills (NY); On-site; USD 140,000 - 190,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health insurance

401(k) retirement plan

Paid time off

Job summary

Cox seeks a Principal Database Administrator to stabilize and modernize our on-premises DB landscape and lead a phased migration to AWS. You will set database strategy, guide data architecture, and ensure availability, security, and performance across multi-team initiatives.

You will mentor DBAs, collaborate with software engineers and architects, and drive continuous improvement in CI/CD practices for database changes, shaping Cox's cloud-first data platform strategy.

Qualifications

• 10+ years in database administration or related roles.
• Experience designing high-performance, fault-tolerant DB systems.
• Expertise with AWS RDS and cloud-native platforms.
• Ability to lead migrations and ensure uptime with SLAs.
• Strong data architecture and collaboration with engineers.

Responsibilities

• Lead stabilization and remediation of on-prem DBs.
• Design and execute phased migration to AWS.
• Define database strategy and modernization roadmap.
• Advise architects on data architecture decisions.
• Ensure high availability and security of enterprise platforms.
• Mentor DBAs and influence cross-functional teams.

Skills

Database architecture leadership

Cloud migration strategy

SQL Server expertise

AWS RDS / cloud DB design

High availability & DR

Performance tuning

Leadership & mentoring

Agile development collaboration

Education

Bachelor's degree in CS/IS/Engineering

Master's degree preferred

PhD + 5+ years experience (optional)

Tools

AWS RDS (PostgreSQL/MySQL/Oracle)

DynamoDB

GoldenGate

Always On

CI/CD for DB changes

Job description

The Principal Database Administrator will support multiple product teams across Dealer Solutions and play a key role in working on (managed and optimized enterprise database systems) cloud migration initiatives. This role will be responsible for managing, optimizing, and re-architecting the current on-premises database environment. As a key technical enabler of the organization’s cloud strategy, the Senior Database Administrator will first stabilize and remediate the existing database infrastructure, then design and execute a safe, phased migration to AWS.

This position bridges the gap between the current aging, monolithic on-premises database environment running on on-prem infrastructure and a future-state scalable, cost-efficient, cloud-native database platform.

The ideal candidate is a technical leader who serves as the organization's primary database authority. They are responsible for defining database strategy, driving cloud modernization efforts, advising architects and software engineers on data architecture decisions, ensuring high availability and security of enterprise platforms, and leading complex migration, resiliency, and performance initiatives. They possess deep expertise across both traditional relational databases and modern cloud-native data platforms while influencing technical direction across multiple engineering teams.

Min Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, Engineering, or a related discipline with 10+ years of experience in database administration, database engineering, or related technical roles. The right candidate may also have a Master's degree with 8+ years of experience, a Ph.D. with 5+ years of experience, or 14+ years of directly related experience.

• Experience in database design, database code development, database administration, and systems engineering to build high-performance, fault-tolerant database systems and infrastructure for database-centric applications.

• 8+ years of experienced with multiple AWS RDS database technologies (PostgreSQL, MySQL, Oracle) and NoSQL services such as DynamoDB, understanding trade-offs between AWS-managed variants.

• Experience supporting 24x7 production systems with strict SLAs and uptime requirements.

• Expertise in high-availability and disaster-recovery technologies (clustering, replication, failover, backup/restore strategies) to reduce risk and downtime across critical systems. Strong background in high-availability/disaster-recovery technologies (e.g., clustering, log shipping, GoldenGate, Always On, replica sets).

• Perform logical and physical database design, data modeling, performance management/monitoring architecting and building databases from business requirements through planning, testing, and production deployment.

• Provide expert-level leadership for Microsoft SQL Server environments, serving as the highest-level technical authority across database architecture, platform strategy, modernization, upgrades, migrations, cloud transformation, high availability, disaster recovery, replication, clustering, and backup/recovery ensuring resilient, scalable platforms with minimal business disruption and downtime.

• 8 years of performance tuning, indexing strategies, query optimization, and execution plan analysis.

• Drive innovation through implementation across functional teams, both internal and external, to meet business requirements.

• Ability to design and support solutions spanning relational databases and microservice architectures, selecting the right technology for the right workload.

• Strong collaboration with software engineers and architects on application and data architecture decisions, ensuring systems are built for scalability, resilience, and performance.

• Use of observability tools and operational intelligence platforms to proactively monitor database health and drive data-informed operational decisions.

• 8+ years Building and maturing CI/CD practices for database changes (schema migrations, deployment automation, version control, automated testing).

• Mentor database administrators, influence architects and developers, review complex technical designs, lead strategic initiatives, and define the long-term evolution of the database platform.

• Strong communication skills translating technical trade-offs for engineers and non-technical stakeholders.

• Experience working in Agile development environments (Scrum, Kanban, or similar), collaborating within sprint-based delivery cycles.

About Cox

Cox empowers employees to build a better future and has been doing so for over 120 years. With exciting investments and innovations across transportation, communications, cleantech and healthcare, our family of businesses – which includes Cox Automotive and Cox Communications – is forging a better future for us all. Ready to make your mark? Join us today!

Benefits of working at Cox may include health care insurance (medical, dental, vision), retirement planning (401(k)), and paid days off (sick leave, parental leave, flexible vacation/wellness days, and/or PTO). For more details on what benefits you may be offered, visit our benefits page.

Cox is an Equal Employment Opportunity employer - All qualified applicants/employees will receive consideration for employment without regard to that individual’s age, race, color, religion or creed, national origin or ancestry, sex (including pregnancy), sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, physical or mental disability, veteran status, genetic information, ethnicity, citizenship, or any other characteristic protected by law.