Principal Database Administrator

Cox Enterprises; Village of North Hills (NY); On-site; USD 180,000 - 230,000; Full time

Job summary

Cox Enterprises seeks a Principal Database Administrator to lead across Dealer Solutions, guiding cloud migration from on-prem to AWS, stabilizing existing infrastructure, and shaping data architecture.

The role requires deep expertise in relational databases and cloud-native platforms, strong leadership, and collaboration with engineers to ensure availability and security for enterprise systems. You will mentor DBAs and drive critical initiatives in a fast-paced environment.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree with 10+ years in database administration or related roles.
• Expertise in designing high-performance, fault-tolerant databases.
• 8+ years with AWS RDS (PostgreSQL, MySQL, Oracle) and DynamoDB.
• Experience supporting 24x7 production systems with strict SLAs.
• Strong HA/DR technologies knowledge (clustering, replication, backup/restore).
• Logical/physical database design, data modeling, performance management.
• Expert-level leadership for SQL Server environments across architecture, modernization, migrations, and DR.
• 8 years in performance tuning, indexing, query optimization.
• Ability to design solutions spanning relational DBs and microservices architectures.
• Collaboration with engineers on data architecture decisions.
• Observability tools to monitor DB health and drive decisions.
• 8+ years building and maturing CI/CD for database changes.
• Mentor DBAs and lead strategic initiatives.

Responsibilities

• Define database strategy and drive cloud modernization efforts.
• Stabilize and remediate on-premises database infrastructure.
• Design and execute phased migration to AWS.
• Advise architects and software engineers on data architecture decisions.
• Ensure high availability and security of enterprise platforms.
• Lead complex migration, resiliency, and performance initiatives.
• Provide leadership for SQL Server environments across architecture and upgrades.
• Collaborate with multiple engineering teams.
• Mentor DBAs and review complex technical designs.

Skills

Database design

AWS RDS

MySQL

PostgreSQL

Oracle

High availability

Disaster recovery

Data modeling

SQL Server

Cloud migration

Leadership

CI/CD for databases

Education

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, Engineering or related

Master's degree in related field

Ph.D. in related field

14+ years of directly related experience

Tools

GoldenGate

Always On

SQL Server

AWS

CI/CD tooling

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.