Senior Engineering Manager Database

McKesson is an impact-driven, Fortune 10 company that touches virtually every aspect of healthcare. We are known for delivering insights, products, and services that make quality care more accessible and affordable. Here, we focus on the health, happiness, and well-being of you and those we serve – we care.

What you do at McKesson matters. We foster a culture where you can grow, make an impact, and are empowered to bring new ideas. Together, we thrive as we shape the future of health for patients, our communities, and our people. If you want to be part of tomorrow’s health today, we want to hear from you.

We are seeking a Senior Manager, Database Engineering to lead the reliability, performance, and scalability of our PostgreSQL and SQL Server platforms across on‑premises and Azure environments. This role supports mission‑critical 24×7 systems and drives an engineering culture centered on automation, observability, and operational excellence.

Key Responsibilities

Leadership & Team Management

• Lead, mentor, and develop a team of up to 8 database engineers and DBAs, leveling up engineering practices and outcomes.
• Set clear goals, performance expectations, and development plans.
• Foster a collaborative, high‑performance culture aligned with organizational strategy.
• Act as an escalation point for complex operational issues and high‑severity incidents.
• Operate as a player‑coach: :30–40% hands‑on in design, tuning, incident response, and migrations; :60–70% leadership and strategy.
  
  
  

Operational Excellence

• Ensure availability, performance, and reliability of database operations for mission‑critical workloads.
• Oversee incident response, root‑cause analysis, and continuous improvement.
• Maintain HA/DR strategies, RTO/RPO compliance, backups, and recovery processes.
• Manage operational runbooks, SOPs, SLAs, and governance standards.
  
  
  

Technical & Platform Ownership

• Provide architectural direction for SQL Server and PostgreSQL across on‑prem and Azure.
• Lead upgrades, migrations, capacity planning, and modernization initiatives.
• Drive performance monitoring, tuning, and proactive engineering.
• Oversee database security, patching, auditing, and compliance.
  
  
  

Cloud & Modernization

• Advance the adoption of Azure SQL, SQL Managed Instance, and Azure PostgreSQL Flexible Server.
• Partner with cloud and architecture teams to implement IaC, CI/CD, and automated deployments.
  
  
  

SRE Practices

• Promote SLOs, SLIs, error budgets, and automation‑first operations.
• Reduce manual work through automation and self‑healing processes.
• Implement observability practices using metrics, logs, traces, and alerting.
  
  
  

Cross-Functional Collaboration

• Work with application, infrastructure, cloud, and security teams to ensure system reliability and performance.
• Communicate risk, status, and insights to leadership.
• Influence architectural decisions and guide solution onboarding.
  
  
  

What You’ll Bring

• Strategic mindset with strong operational discipline.
• Ability to lead in complex, high‑availability environments.
• Passion for automation, engineering excellence, and continuous improvement.
• Strong interpersonal and cross‑team collaboration skills.
  
  
  

Priority will be given to candidates who reside in the Columbus, OH metropolitan area.

We are unable to provide sponsorship now or in the future for this position.

Minimum Qualifications

Degree or equivalent experience. Typically requires 9 years of professional experience and 1 years of supervisory and/or management experience.

Education

• Bachelor’s degree preferred
  
  
  

Critical & Required Skills

• 9 years in database engineering/administration.
• 2 years of people management experience.
• Deep (5-7 years) expertise in SQL Server and PostgreSQL in enterprise environments.
• Experience supporting 24×7 mission‑critical systems.
• Hands‑on experience with Azure SQL, SQL Managed Instance, and Azure PostgreSQL Flexible Server.
• Knowledge of HA/DR, performance tuning, monitoring, and capacity planning.
• Familiarity with automation tools (Terraform, Ansible, GitHub Actions, Azure DevOps, PowerShell, Python).
  
  
  

Preferred Skills

• Experience managing large‑scale database environments.
• Background in SRE and observability platforms (Azure Monitor, Grafana, Prometheus, App Insights).
• Experience leading cloud modernization or major database migrations.
• Strong communication and stakeholder management skills.
• Experience in regulated environments (SOX, HIPAA, PCI).
  
  
  

We are proud to offer a competitive compensation package at McKesson as part of our Total Rewards. This is determined by several factors, including performance, experience and skills, equity, regular job market evaluations, and geographical markets. The pay range shown below is aligned with McKesson's pay philosophy, and pay will always be compliant with any applicable regulations. In addition to base pay, other compensation, such as an annual bonus or long-term incentive opportunities may be offered. For more information regarding benefits at McKesson, please click here.

Our Base Pay Range for this position

$118,100 - $196,900

McKesson has become aware of online recruiting-related scams in which individuals who are not affiliated with or authorized by McKesson are using McKesson’s (or affiliated entities, like CoverMyMeds or RxCrossroads) name in fraudulent emails, job postings or social media messages. In light of these scams, please bear the following in mind:

McKesson Talent Advisors will never solicit money or credit card information in connection with a McKesson job application.

McKesson Talent Advisors do not communicate with candidates via online chatrooms or using email accounts such as Gmail or Hotmail. Note that McKesson does rely on a virtual assistant (Gia) for certain recruiting-related communications with candidates.

McKesson job postings are posted on our career site: careers.mckesson.com.

McKesson is an Equal Opportunity Employer

McKesson provides equal employment opportunities to applicants and employees, without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, protected veteran status, disability, age, genetic information, or any other legally protected category. For additional information on McKesson’s full Equal Employment Opportunity policies, visit our Equal Employment Opportunity page.

McKesson welcomes and encourages applications from people with disabilities. Accommodations are available on request for candidates taking part in all aspects of the selection process. If you require accommodation please contact us by sending an email to Disability_Accommodation@McKesson.com.

Join us at McKesson!