Senior MySQL/PostgreSQL DBA – Scale & Innovate

takealot.com; Cape Town; On-site; ZAR 900,000 - 1,500,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Mentorship programme

Staff discount

Birthday leave

Right tools, right job

Free parking

Job summary

Takealot.com, South Africa's leading online retailer, is seeking a Senior Database Administrator to join the Engineering & Product team in Cape Town. You will deploy, operate, and manage databases supporting Takealot features, troubleshoot queries, implement backups, monitoring, and security, and collaborate across teams to ensure a resilient data platform.

You will mentor junior DBAs, contribute to roadmap and standards, and explore new technologies in a fast-paced agile environment.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or a related field, or 5-7 years of related experience.
• Proven extensive knowledge and experience with relational databases such as MySQL or PostgreSQL, including deployment, management, and operations.
• Proven expertise with other database systems such as key-value stores, document stores, columnar databases, etc.
• Proven experience with one or more non-RDBMS systems such as MongoDB, Redis, Kafka, Elasticsearch, or Solr.
• Proven expertise in auxiliary systems such as networking, operating systems, and security.
• Experience delivering projects independently and/or contributing to open-source projects.
• Deep knowledge of database internals, backups, replication, metrics and monitoring, disaster recovery, security, database architecture, database configuration, query design, analysis, and optimisation.
• Proven knowledge and experience in auxiliary systems that support databases, including development and/or scripting, configuration management, networking, operating systems, data structures, cloud computing, and operations.
• Technical Skills: Proficient in database technologies (e.g., MySQL, PostgreSQL, SQL Server, Oracle). Strong understanding of database performance tuning, query optimisation, and systems architecture.

Responsibilities

• Troubleshoot slow queries and assist developers with creating optimisable SQL queries.
• Assist developers with schema design, schema changes, and administrative tasks.
• Design and execute operational excellence through metrics, monitoring, and documentation.
• Design and execute operational standards such as backups, replication, security, and disaster recovery.
• Oversee the performance, integrity, and security of corporate databases.
• Provide ongoing maintenance and review of existing database systems to ensure optimum operation.
• Ensure backups and disaster recovery systems are functional and regularly tested.
• Design and implement database optimisations to improve performance.
• Manage database architecture changes and ensure compliance with corporate standards.
• Assist with the design and administration of database cloud infrastructure as IaC.
• Participate in functional and technical specification reviews.
• Contribute technical solutions to business problems, considering business and/or product requirements and constraints.
• Collaborate with development, network, and system teams to ensure database requirements are met.
• Identify and resolve database-related issues promptly.
• Report on database health, performance metrics, and system improvements to stakeholders.
• Provide technical guidance to internal teams (mentoring) and external teams (collaboration).
• Mentor junior DBAs and engage in knowledge-sharing initiatives.
• Think outside the box and explore new and/or alternative approaches to find the best solution.

Skills

MySQL

PostgreSQL

SQL Server

Oracle

Database performance tuning

Query optimisation

NoSQL databases

Cloud databases

Data security

Education

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or related field

5-7 years related experience

Tools

MongoDB

Redis

Kafka

Elasticsearch

Solr

Terraform

Job description

Takealot.com, South Africa's leading online retailer, is seeking a Senior Database Administrator to join the Engineering & Product team in Cape Town. You will deploy, operate, and manage databases supporting Takealot features, troubleshoot queries, implement backups, monitoring, and security, and collaborate across teams to ensure a resilient data platform.

You will mentor junior DBAs, contribute to roadmap and standards, and explore new technologies in a fast-paced agile environment.