JOB BRIEF
As a Senior Database Administrator, you’ll be a strategic partner and technical leader driving the evolution of our data platforms. You will translate business strategy into a prioritized database roadmap covering availability, performance, security, and cost, and lead discovery to define SLAs/SLOs, data models, RPO/RTO, and integration patterns. Spanning the full lifecycle—capacity planning, architecture and schema design, indexing and query tuning, HA/DR and backup/recovery, security and compliance, release/change management, and post-implementation reviews—you’ll orchestrate cross-functional teams (Engineering, SRE, Security, Product) to deliver measurable outcomes against OKRs (e.g., uptime, latency, throughput, cost efficiency) with clear ROI. You’ll establish and enforce standards for database engineering quality (runbooks, observability, automation/IaC, migration/versioning), manage risk and change, and ensure alignment with enterprise architecture, governance, and regulatory requirements (e.g., PDPA/GDPR/PCI-DSS). You will mentor DBAs and engineers, lead incident response and root-cause analysis, and evaluate new database technologies and versions to continuously improve platform resilience, scalability, and developer velocity.

RESPONSIBILITIES

Architecture & Design

Build and own highly available, resilient database platforms (onprem/cloud/hybrid) tailored to end-user and business unit needs and SLAs/SLOs.
Design logical/physical schemas, data models, and flows reflecting end-user views; apply best practices in normalization/denormalization, indexing, partitioning/sharding.
Define integration patterns (ETL/ELT, CDC, messaging) and data distribution to ensure the right information reaches the right users, in the right format, on time.

Security & Access Governance

Define and govern access controls (RBAC/ABAC, least privilege), secrets management, and auditing.
Enforce encryption in transit/at rest, data masking, and privacy-by-design; align with PDPA/GDPR/PCI-DSS and internal data stewardship policies.

Reliability, Backup/Recovery & DR

Establish automated backup and high-speed recovery techniques (PITR, snapshots, log shipping); set and meet RPO/RTO.
Architect HA/DR (clustering, replication, failover) and run regular restore tests and DR drills; document and improve outcomes.

Performance & Capacity

Minimize downtime and lead systematic performance engineering: query plan analysis, index/partition strategy, parameter tuning, connection pooling, and caching.
Plan capacity and conduct load/stress testing; baseline and optimize cost/performance.

Operations, Observability & Automation

Monitor database health and KPIs; build alerting and dashboards with clear SLOs and error budgets.
Automate routine operations (provisioning, schema migrations, backups, failover tests, patching) via scripting and IaC; integrate with CI/CD.

Governance, Standards & Compliance

Determine, enforce, and document database policies, procedures, and standards (naming, lifecycle/retention). versioning/migrations, change control, data
Perform regular tests and evaluations to ensure data security, privacy, and integrity; maintain accurate runbooks and architecture diagrams.

Delivery, Change & Incident Management

Lead release/change management for database changes with zero/lowdowntime methods (blue/green, rolling).
Coordinate cross-functionally during incidents; drive root-cause analysis and preventive actions; manage upgrades, patches, and vulnerability remediation.

Enablement & Leadership

Provide proactive and reactive data management support; deliver targeted user training and office hours.
Mentor DBAs/engineers; elevate practices through reviews, standards, and knowledge sharing.
Evaluate and roadmap new database features/versions/services; manage vendors and license compliance.

REQUIREMENTS

Education and Qualifications

Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Software Engineering, Information Systems, or a related field (or equivalent experience).
Master’s degree in Data/Information Systems, Cybersecurity, or Cloud Computing is a plus.

Professional certifications (optional but advantageous)

Core DBA (choose any relevant stack)

Oracle: Oracle Database Administrator Certified Professional (OCP) · OCE: RAC & Data Guard · OCE: Performance Management
Microsoft SQL Server / Azure SQL: Microsoft Certified: Azure Database Administrator Associate (DP-300)
PostgreSQL: EDB PostgreSQL Associate/Professional (or comparable PostgreSQL DBA certs)
MySQL: Oracle MySQL 8.0 Database Administrator
NoSQL (as applicable): MongoDB Certified DBA, Redis Certified Developer/Administrator

Relevant Experience

8+ years administering production relational databases (PostgreSQL, SQL Server, MySQL, Oracle) with measurable gains in uptime and latency.

5+ years owning end-to-end SDLC for database changes (design → review → automated rollout → validation → post-implementation) using Git-based CI/CD and formal change control.

5+ years performance tuning using execution plans and wait analysis (e.g., EXPLAIN/ANALYZE, AWR/ASH, Query Store, pg_stat), plus systematic tuning of SQL, indexes, parameters, caching, pooling.

5+ years HA/DR engineering (replication, clustering, multi-AZ/region, PITR, log shipping) with regular recovery drills meeting defined RPO/RTO targets.

5+ years advanced SQL (joins, CTEs, window functions) for validation, reconciliation, impact analysis, and building reusable diagnostics/health checks.

4+ years implementing security/privacy controls and compliance (RBAC/ABAC, KMS/HSM, TLS/TDE, auditing, masking, retention) aligned to PDPA/GDPR/PCI-DSS.

4+ years observability and reliability engineering: actionable dashboards/alerts and SLOs (Prometheus/Grafana/CloudWatch/Datadog/New Relic); reduced MTTD/MTTR via runbooks and error-budget thinking.

3+ years leading upgrades, migrations, and large change windows using blue/green or rolling methods; coordinating incident response and stakeholder communications.

Optional — 5+ years in schema/data modeling across relational and NoSQL, including indexing, partitioning/sharding, and multi-tenant patterns aligned to clear NFRs (throughput, latency, RPO/RTO, cost).

Optional — 4+ years automation and IaC (Terraform/Bicep), config management (Ansible), and DB migration tooling (Flyway/Liquibase); GitOps practices for provisioning, backups, patching, failover tests.

Optional — 3+ years managing cloud and hybrid estates across AWS/GCP/Azure managed databases (RDS/Aurora, Cloud SQL/AlloyDB, Azure SQL), plus Kubernetes StatefulSets and on-prem engines.

Optional — 3+ years designing/operating data movement: CDC (Debezium/Kafka), messaging, and ETL/ELT (Glue/ADF/Dataflow) with correct ordering, idempotency, and back-pressure handling.

Optional — 3+ years working in Agile/Waterfall/hybrid models; managing parallel workstreams in Jira/Trello/Asana with risk/change control and quality gates.

Job Type: Full-time

Pay: From RM10,000.00 per month

Benefits:

Health insurance
Maternity leave
Opportunities for promotion
Parental leave
Professional development

Education:

Bachelor's (Required)

Experience:

administering production relational databases : 8 years (Required)
end-to-end SDLC for database changes : 5 years (Required)

License/Certification:

Core DBA certification (Required)

Work Location: In person

Cardtrend Systems Sdn Bhd