Senior Database Architect: Scale, Security & Automation

QE Services IT Recruitment; Bellville; Hybrid; ZAR 900,000 - 1,200,000; Full time

Job summary

QE Services IT Recruitment is seeking a Senior Database Solutions Specialist in Cape Town for a 12-month fixed-term, hybrid role. You will design, optimise, and support enterprise databases underpinning critical POS applications, collaborating with application, infrastructure, and development teams.

You will lead SQL development, performance tuning, security practices, and automation initiatives while mentoring developers and analysts to ensure resilient, secure, and scalable database solutions.

Qualifications

• 5+ years of database development, administration, engineering, or solutions support.
• Strong hands-on SQL development, performance tuning, query optimisation, indexing, backup/recovery, and troubleshooting.
• Experience with relational databases (SQL Server, Oracle, PostgreSQL, MySQL).
• Exposure to cloud-based database platforms advantageous.
• Proven support of business-critical systems with high performance, availability, and security requirements.
• Familiarity with source code control, modular programming, and software release management.
• Experience integrating databases with POS applications highly desirable.

Responsibilities

• Define firmwide database strategies, technology roadmaps, and DBaaS patterns across physical and virtualised infrastructure.
• Design, configure, and enhance schemas, tables, views, stored procedures, indexes, and scripts to meet business and POS application requirements.
• Develop and enhance automated builds and ecosystem integration using Unix Shell scripts, Perl, Python, SQL, PL/SQL, and POS applications.
• Conduct workload vs performance analysis, identify bottlenecks, recommend scaling strategies, and implement query rewrites, indexing changes, and optimisation plans.
• Implement database security engineering standards, access controls, vulnerability assessments, and compliance initiatives.
• Develop and implement unified monitoring tools to measure platform health, utilisation, capacity trends, and availability.
• Support integration with applications, reporting platforms, and enterprise systems; collaborate with developers, architects, and infrastructure teams.
• Establish standards, maintain technical documentation, and ensure auditability and knowledge transfer.
• Eliminate inefficient polling patterns, optimise processing architecture, reduce database footprint and growth risk, and drive automation initiatives.
• Mentor developers and analysts, providing expertise in database architecture, SQL optimisation, and best practices.

Skills

Advanced SQL

Performance tuning

Troubleshooting

Collaboration

Communication

Education

Degree/Diploma in CS/IS/IT/Data Eng

Grade 12 / Matric

Tools

SQL Server

Oracle

PostgreSQL

MySQL

Cloud DB (AWS/Azure)

Unix Shell scripting

Perl

Python

PL/SQL

Job description

QE Services IT Recruitment is seeking a Senior Database Solutions Specialist in Cape Town for a 12-month fixed-term, hybrid role. You will design, optimise, and support enterprise databases underpinning critical POS applications, collaborating with application, infrastructure, and development teams.

You will lead SQL development, performance tuning, security practices, and automation initiatives while mentoring developers and analysts to ensure resilient, secure, and scalable database solutions.