Database Architect

The Database Architect is responsible for designing, developing, and implementing infrastructure to provide highly-complex, reliable, and scalable databases to meet the organization’s objectives and requirements. Familiar with a variety of the database technologies, concepts, methodologies, practices, and procedures and relies on experience and judgment to plan and accomplish goals. Performs a variety of complicated tasks with minimal or no direct supervision. Assists in defining system and application architecture and provides vision, problem anticipation, and problem-solving ability to an organization. Consults with the client to define needs or issues, conduct research, perform studies and surveys to obtain data, and analyze problems to advise on or recommend solutions, utilizing knowledge of theory, principles, or technology of specific discipline or field of specialization.

Client - DHS

Database Architecture & Design (30%)

- Design target SQL Server database architecture

- Experience in working on database conversion

- Design normalized schemas across multiple databases

- Design data partitioning strategy for large tables (50M records)

- Create database security architecture

- Design audit trail and history tracking mechanisms

- Establish backup and recovery architecture

- Design high availability and disaster recovery solutions

Data Migration (25%)

- Develop comprehensive data migration strategy

- Create ETL processes for migrating huge data

- Design and implement data validation procedures

- Ensure zero data loss during migration

- Create data mapping documentation

- Develop rollback and recovery procedures

- Perform data quality assessment and cleansing

- Coordinate with developers on Core integration with the business logic

- Validate referential integrity and relationships

- Create migration scripts and automation

 Performance Optimization (20%)

- Design indexing strategy for optimal performance

- Optimize queries for sub-second response times

- Tune stored procedures and functions

- Implement query optimization techniques

- Monitor and resolve performance bottlenecks

- Design caching strategies

- Optimize batch processing (6-hour window to 4-hour target)

- Implement table partitioning for large tables

- Configure SQL Server for optimal performance

- Conduct performance testing and benchmarking

Database Administration (15%)

- Install, configure, and maintain SQL Server instances

- Implement security policies and access controls

- Manage database users, roles, and permissions

- Monitor database health and performance

- Implement backup and recovery procedures

- Perform database maintenance (index rebuilds, statistics updates)

- Manage database growth and capacity planning

- Implement monitoring and alerting

- Troubleshoot database issues

- Coordinate with cloud infrastructure team

 High Availability & Disaster Recovery (10%)

- Implement SQL Server Always On Availability Groups

- Configure database replication

- Design and test disaster recovery procedures

- Achieve RPO <1 hour, RTO <1 hour (vs. 24 hrs/8 hrs current)

- Implement automated failover mechanisms

- Conduct DR testing and validation

- Document DR procedures and runbooks

- Coordinate with cloud team on multi-region deployment

Required Qualifications

Technical Skills (Must Have)

SQL Server Expertise

- 8 years of SQL Server administration experience

- Expert knowledge of SQL Server 2019/2022

- Advanced T-SQL programming (stored procedures, functions, triggers, views)

- Query optimization and execution plan analysis

- Index design and optimization

- Database design and normalization (1NF through 5NF)

- SQL Server security and compliance

- Backup and recovery strategies

- SQL Server Agent and job scheduling

- Database maintenance plans

 High Availability & Disaster Recovery

- SQL Server Always On Availability Groups

- Database mirroring and replication

- Log shipping

- Failover clustering

- Multi-region deployment strategies

- Backup and restore strategies

- Point-in-time recovery

- Disaster recovery planning and testing

Performance Tuning

- Query performance tuning and optimization

- Index tuning and maintenance

- Execution plan analysis

- Wait statistics analysis

- Blocking and deadlock resolution

- Resource Governor configuration

- Memory and CPU optimization

- I/O optimization

- Performance monitoring tools (SQL Profiler, Extended Events, DMVs)

Cloud Database Services

- AWS RDS for SQL Server (3 years)

- Cloud database security and compliance

- Cloud backup and recovery

- Cloud monitoring and alerting

- Cost optimization strategies

Data Migration

- Large-scale data migration experience (500GB )

- Conversion scripts experience

- ETL tools and processes (SSIS, Azure Data Factory, AWS DMS)

- Data validation and quality assurance

- Legacy database migration experience

- Network database to relational conversion

- Data mapping and transformation

- Migration automation and scripting

Scripting & Automation

- PowerShell scripting for automation

- T-SQL scripting

- Source code management, GIHUB

- CI/CD for database deployments

- Automated testing frameworks

Professional Experience (Must Have)

- 10 years of database administration experience

- 8 years of SQL Server administration

- 3 years of cloud database experience (Azure SQL or AWS RDS)

- Experience with large-scale data migrations (500GB databases)

- Experience with mission-critical systems (99.9% uptime)

- Led or participated in database modernization projects

- Experience with high-transaction environments (50K transactions/day)

- Experience with Agile/Scrum methodologie