Senior Database Administrator

FORTEC Integrated; United States; On-site; USD 140,000 - 190,000; Full time

Job summary

FORTEC Integrated seeks a Senior Database Administrator to own the performance, integrity, and cost-efficiency of our data environments across clouds. You will manage CloudSQL/PostgreSQL focus, plus MSSQL, MySQL, and MongoDB, driving reliability, security, and observability.

You’ll lead migrations, tune queries, implement HA/DR, and partner with engineers to design scalable data models while championing best practices and cost-aware architectures in a fast-growing product environment.

Qualifications

• 3–10 years of DB admin experience in high‑performance production setups.
• Deep technical expertise in MSSQL, PostgreSQL, MySQL, and MongoDB incl. cloud deployments.
• Proven ability to reduce cloud costs via tuning and optimization.
• Experience with HA/DR, replication, backups, and disaster recovery.
• Scripting/Automation with Python, Bash, PowerShell, T‑SQL, PL/pgSQL.
• On‑call readiness with a proactive automation mindset.

Responsibilities

• Deploy, configure, and maintain CloudSQL/PostgreSQL as the main engine.
• Own data pipelines and processing layers for performance.
• Tune queries and right-size instances to reduce costs.
• Implement encryption at rest/transit, masking, and compliance controls.
• Design HA and DR strategies with zero data loss.
• Integrate observability into the monitoring stack for proactive ops.
• Lead complex data migrations with minimal downtime.
• Collaborate with architects to ensure scalable, cost-efficient data models.
• Participate in agile planning to align data roadmap with business goals.
• Leverage AI tooling for automated tuning and maintenance.

Skills

PostgreSQL expertise

MSSQL experience

MySQL experience

MongoDB expertise

Query tuning

Cloud cost optimization

On-call readiness

Tools

CloudSQL

PostgreSQL

MSSQL

MySQL

MongoDB

GCP

AWS

Job description

As a Senior Database Administrator, you will be the primary stakeholder for the company, performance, and integrity of our products' data environments. We are looking for a technical expert who lives and breathes database engines, specifically CloudSQL/PostgreSQL and MongoDB. Experience with MSSQL and MySQL is a significant plus. You will be responsible for ensuring our systems are not only up and running but are optimized for cost and tuned for peak performance. This is a role for someone who wants to know exactly how the system works, how it will fail, and how to drive it to be better.

DUTIES & RESPONSIBILITIES

• Database Expertise: Be an expert at deploying, configuring, and maintaining CloudSQL/PostgreSQL (main focus), MSSQL (migration from), MySQL, and MongoDB. Understand the nuances between them and how to leverage cloud-native solutions effectively.
• Data Lifecycle & Ownership: Understand that data value extends beyond the production database. Take ownership of the pipelines and processing layers, ensuring they are as performant and reliable as the core engine. You are not afraid to dig into complex, "unsolvable" problems, working closely with developers and infra teams to ensure the database layer is a seamless part of the application stack (Mindset of Total Ownership).
• Performance & Cost Optimization: Be an expert at query tuning and instance right-sizing to drive efficiency and cloud cost-savings.
• Security & Compliance: Implement encryption at rest/transit, row-level security, and PII masking, ensuring our environments consistently exceed SOC2, GDPR, and other global compliance standards.
• Reliability & Disaster Recovery: Design and implement High Availability (HA) and Disaster Recovery strategies that actually work. Drive system stability and ensure zero data loss.
• Observability: Be proficient with monitoring and proactively identify bottlenecks before they impact users. Integrate database observability into our global monitoring stack, treating the database as a first-class citizen in our infrastructure-as-code ecosystem (SRE Integration).
• Migration Leadership: Have the steady hand required to lead complex data migrations and schema changes across diverse environments with minimal downtime.
• Collaboration & Enablement: Partner with Application Architects during the design phase to ensure data models are scalable and cost-efficient from day one. Mentor developers and build tooling that helps the entire team write and deploy better code and schemas (Developer Enablement).
• Participate in collaborative designing, problem-solving, and knowledge sharing as an active member of our global engineering community (Team First).
• Agile Execution: Operate and manage workflow through Jira, participating in continuous planning to ensure the data roadmap directly drives and supports broader business goals.
• Data-Driven Outcomes: Drive and measure results, working with leadership to define and hit key performance and reliability metrics.
• AI-Driven Work: Utilize a cutting-edge toolkit including AI coding assistants and automated tuning agents to eliminate toil.

BASIC QUALIFICATIONS

• Minimum 3-10 years of experience as a Database Administrator in high-performance production environments.
• Deep technical expertise in MSSQL (including SSIS, SSAS, and SSRS), PostgreSQL, MySQL, and MongoDB, including experience managing databases in GCP and AWS.
• Proven Tuning Track Record: Demonstrated ability to significantly improve query performance and reduce cloud infrastructure costs through optimization.
• Extensive experience implementing and testing failover clusters, replication, and backup/recovery strategies (Expertise in HA/DR).
• Scripting & Automation: Expert ability to bridge the gap between OS-level orchestration (Python, Bash, PowerShell) and engine-level logic (T-SQL, PL/pgSQL, MySQL Procedural, MQL) to build idempotent, version-controlled automation for management, deployments, migrations, and self-healing systems (Scripting & Automation).
• Willingness to participate in on-call response with a passion for automating yourself out of a call.

PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS

• Hands-on experience with observability platforms (e.g., New Relic, or native cloud tools) for Monitoring & Alerting.
• Experience managing databases within audited environments (SOC2, HIPAA, or PCI-DSS) and implementing data privacy controls (Compliance & Security).