Insurance concern is seeking a Database Administrator who would be responsible for the maintenance and functioning of the entire database environment within HC. This includes leading the overall coordination, implementation and execution of day-to-day tasks and checks to ensure the stability and recoverability of the database and SQL environment. This also includes SSRS, SSIS, SSAS, backup and recovery strategies as well as disaster recovery in line with company strategy, commitments, and goals
Responsibilities:
- Provides delivery and support to the IT Applications Manager to ensure stability, maintenance, and enhancement of the environment
- Assesses user needs to provide support and proactive service, including analysis of opportunities in order to take advantage of the potential within the current applications suite and environment
- Communicates related system and environmental problems within the department and collaborates with other teams and vendors on changes, fixes, and updates
- Assists with the release process for changes to the environment which includes effective department wide and end user communication
- Manages testing scripts and identifies opportunities for improvement within the environment
- Provides regular one-on-one feedback to all members of the team and to the IT Applications Manager
- Evaluates the contents of service tickets on an ongoing basis and make recommendations on end user staff development
- Manages delivery and SLAs by guiding incident resolution, problem management, maintenance, and enhancement tickets raised by end users, the business or vendors for assigned applications and the environment
- Develops relevant metrics, measures and publishes the performance of the services provided and enables continuous improvement activities in collaboration with peer groups
- Works closely with all other IT personnel in identifying, evaluating, selecting, and implementing specific processes and technologies that support the business’s plans and IT strategy
- Ensure full adherence to policies and procedures that are compliant with industry and regulatory policies
- Develops and assists process documentation for IT systems and services including related interfaces and 3 rd party applications
- Keeps abreast of new developments and forecasts future trends in the area of SQL, databases, disaster recovery, infrastructure, applications and integration in the insurance industry
- Maintains a strong understanding of technology and its application to achieve business objectives including applications management best practices
- Prepares analysis and or proposals for other departments when necessary
- Serves as an internal consultant to other IT management staff and the broader business as needed
- Develops and maintains an effective daily checklist for the management of the environment
- Provides ongoing troubleshooting, support, and maintenance of environment and applications, including after-hours standby as required
- Assists Application Manager with the planning and implementation of environmental projects
- Assists with the contents of project status reports and overall project summaries
- Co-ordinates environmental housekeeping and ensure environment is always in an audit-ready state
- Ensures daily jobs including backups are run successfully, timeously and takes proactive responsibility to co ordinate issues with the business and provides regular feedback on failed after hours processes.
- Reports anomalies timeously and pro-actively i.e disk space growth, DB locks, indexing and tuning requirements for databases and the like
- Plans, schedules and tracks incidents and change request timelines
- Monitors and reports on progress of his/her own project deliverables to appropriate stakeholders and keeps Application Manager informed
- Operate within agreed SLA’s and maintains high levels of customer service at all times
- Projects a can-do attitude and is calm in high pressure situations
Requirements:
- Tech, B.Com or B.Sc. Computer Science or Information Systems or B.Eng (Advantageous)
- Knowledge of Project Management (PMBOK, Prince II, Agile) principles would be advantageous
- Experience of both the theoretical and practical aspects of applications management and database administration as well as report writing
- Direct work experience as a database administrator (5 years)
- In-depth knowledge of the MS-SQL platform and Postgre
- Knowledge of Linux advantageous
- Good understanding of replication and availability groups (Always-on)
- Good understanding of SQL and report writing
- Ability to report on environment health, maintenance activities and performance of databases
- Strong Microsoft SQL Server knowledge including licensing
- Database maintenance including job management, space management, automated backups and automated restores
- Database availability including process management, index maintenance
- Database security including surface area management, database integrity and user access control
- Maintain backups and restore databases
- Maintain database access
- Database restore, deployment and structural changes
- Database monitoring using a variety of tools
- Implement data change requests
- Performance tuning
- Assist with database errors
- Good understanding of T-SQL
- Responsible for keeping the database software up to date (Patch Management)
- Responsible for maintaining SQL security access for staff and vendors. (Using the Principle of Least Privilege)
- Project work is as important and will require the database administrator to work towards agreed deadlines, project implementations are done outside of office hours, mostly on weekends and the database administrator will be expected to conduct this work.
Please note only shortlisted candidates will be contacted.
Desired Skills:
- Database Administration
- Project Management
- MS-SQL