What are the responsibilities and job description for the Database Administrator position at Illinois State Board of Elections?
Under the general supervision of the Deputy Chief Information Officer, the Database Administrator plans, administers, secures, monitors, and supports the agency's Microsoft SQL Server and Azure SQL Managed Instance environments. The position ensures the availability, performance, integrity, security, backup, and recovery of databases supporting election operations and other mission-critical agency systems. The Database Administrator leads database modernization and cloud migration activities and collaborates with infrastructure, cybersecurity, development, application support, and vendor teams.
1. Administer and maintain SQL Server and Azure SQL Managed Instance environments. Monitor database availability, storage, capacity, SQL Agent jobs, service health, connections, and resource utilization. Troubleshoot database, application, linked-server, replication, and connectivity problems and provide timely support for mission-critical election systems.
2. Plan and execute the migration of on-premises SQL Server workloads to Azure SQL Managed Instance. Inventory databases, logins, permissions, jobs, linked servers, and dependencies; assess compatibility; configure cloud services; perform test and production migrations; validate application connectivity and data integrity; and maintain cutover and rollback procedures.
3. Manage database security and compliance controls. Administer logins, roles, user mappings, permissions, service accounts, authentication, and auditing in accordance with least-privilege principles. Coordinate password rotations, remove obsolete or shared accounts, investigate unauthorized access, and maintain documentation supporting security reviews and election-related compliance requirements.
4. Analyze and improve database performance. Review execution plans, indexes, blocking, waits, CPU, memory, storage, and I/O trends. Tune queries, stored procedures, database configurations, and maintenance schedules. Automate index and statistics maintenance and recommend resource changes that improve system responsiveness, scalability, and cost efficiency.
5. Develop, maintain, and test backup, recovery, high-availability, and disaster-recovery processes. Verify backups stored locally and in Azure, monitor Always On Availability Groups and replication, investigate failures, conduct restoration and failover tests, and ensure documented recovery procedures meet agency recovery objectives.
6. Develop automated monitoring, alerting, reporting, and operational tools for database health, performance, capacity, security, and cost management. Maintain technical documentation, architecture records, permissions matrices, change records, knowledge-base articles, standard operating procedures, and support runbooks.
7. Provide database technical guidance to developers, analysts, support personnel, and vendors. Review database changes and deployment processes, assist with reporting and application access, support Azure and DevOps modernization initiatives, provide training, and perform other duties reasonably related to the responsibilities of the position.