Lead Database Administrator

Job Overview

We are at a pivotal point in our tech progression. We're looking to grow our technical estate, architect new systems, remove technical debt and scale our platform. It's an exciting time to join Partnerize, and we are looking for a technical leader to help spearhead this evolution.

As a database engineer, you will operate with a high degree of autonomy, acting as the principal technical authority and taking end-to-end ownership of our database estate. You will be a strategic anchor within the Technical Operations team, interfacing directly with business, development, and IT functions. While you will own the database architecture and design solutions for the future, a fundamental, non-negotiable part of this role is hands-on Business As Usual incident management. You must be comfortable rolling up your sleeves to handle daily operations, backups, and performance tuning alongside project delivery.

Your deep expertise in MySQL, alongside strong Linux system administration and a working knowledge of network troubleshooting, will be critical to your success. You will design, build, and secure the underlying servers our databases run on, proactively analyse current implementations, and act as the ultimate technical escalation point for our database infrastructure in both our physical datacenters as well as our public cloud estate.

While we need your advanced technical skills, we are equally focused on character. We are looking for a highly proactive communicator who collaborates seamlessly without needing to be prompted. Crucially, you must be able to independently plan out complex technical work, such as database upgrades, and clearly articulate the step-by-step process and business impacts to stakeholders. You must thrive both when working independently to tackle complex problems and when operating collaboratively within a broader team. Furthermore, you will actively seek out opportunities to coach and mentor other engineers, elevating the overall DBA knowledge across the company. This role is fully remote and open to candidates based anywhere in the UK or the US.

As a Database Engineer at Partnerize, You Will:

• Primary Operational Ownership: Take complete, hands-on ownership of daily database operations. Managing and maintaining the database infrastructure for day-to-day use, including backup management, resolving slow-running queries, and performance tuning, is a fundamental pillar of this role.
• Infrastructure & Server Support: Be comfortable in providing operational support by designing, securing, and robustly maintaining the underlying Linux servers that our large distributed databases run on.
• Project Planning & Stakeholder Communication: Plan, manage, and deliver large technical projects like database upgrades and migrations. You will autonomously map out step-by-step execution plans, proactively communicate technical considerations, and clearly articulate the business impact of your work to non-technical stakeholders.
• Technical Leadership & Strategy: Scope incoming work, delegate to team members where appropriate, and act as the definitive database escalation point for support teams within the wider organisation.
• Proactive Optimisation & Automation: Measure and optimise system performance to push our capabilities forward. Lead the automation of management and monitoring for the database platform infrastructure.
• Collaboration & Documentation: Partner closely with development teams, product owners, and other stakeholders to ensure database needs are met and to improve the testability of database aspects within software deployments. Document procedures, best practices, and troubleshooting steps for knowledge sharing.
• Delivery & Out-of-Hours/On-Call Support: Plan, prioritise, and estimate tasks using Jira, and provide essential support for any critical database-related issues both during and outside of normal business hours.
• Mentorship: Actively mentor and coach other engineers, providing technical leadership on database design, optimisation, and migration strategies to elevate overall team knowledge.

Essential Knowledge, Skills and Experience

• MySQL & On-Premise Infrastructure: Advanced administration of MySQL in production environments, whether on-premise or in the cloud. Crucially, as our primary database is on-premise, you must possess strong Linux system administration and networking awareness to independently support, secure, and maintain the underlying servers.
• Independence: Experience as either the sole or lead owner for large production database infrastructure within a SaaS environment with demonstrable accountability for its availability and performance. A proven track record of managing these responsibilities while coordinating with external technical stakeholders and adhering to light change management processes.
• High Availability & Replication: Advanced experience configuring and troubleshooting complex MySQL replication setups (such as primary-replica, multi-master, and GTID). Proven ability to quickly resolve replication lag, manage smooth failovers, and execute disaster recovery plans. 
• Monitoring: A working understanding of database monitoring tools and patterns. What to measure, appropriate thresholds, and response mechanics.
• Performance Optimisation: Deep expertise in query tuning, slow query analysis, and advanced schema optimisation (including normalisation, partitioning, query rewrites, and indexing strategies).
• Upgrades, Migrations & Scripting: Proven track record of executing minimal-downtime upgrades and complex migrations (in-place, cross-database, or migrating ancillary workloads). Highly skilled in automating these processes using Python and/or Bash to build robust, version-controlled scripts.
• Database Security & Compliance: Experience securing database infrastructure through SSL/TLS encryption, user access control, audit logging, and automated backup encryption.

Desirable Knowledge, Skills and Experience

• Automation, Containers & CI/CD: Hands-on expertise using Ansible for configuration management, deploying and managing databases within Kubernetes/containerised environments, and managing version control and pipelines via GitLab for any database related change.
• Monitoring & Troubleshooting: Hands-on experience deploying and configuring monitoring/alerting stacks (such as Prometheus, Grafana, or Percona Monitoring and Management) for proactive issue resolution and database health tracking.
• PostgreSQL & Hybrid Estates: Advanced administration of PostgreSQL, alongside experience managing database workloads across a hybrid environment (e.g., combining on-premise architecture with AWS).
• OLAP & Data Warehousing (Apache Druid / Snowflake): Familiarity with columnar databases and cloud data platforms, particularly Apache Druid and Snowflake. Experience with schema design, data sharding strategies, OLAP query optimisation for long-running queries, and managing zero-downtime upgrades in distributed environments.
• Service Management Tooling: Experience using Jira and Confluence for managing workflows, project tracking, and creating technical documentation.

Growth & Innovation:

• Openness to learn the required technologies.
• An interest in development, new technologies and innovation.
• Supporting development teams into the refactoring of technical debt.

At Partnerize, we recognise it is unrealistic for a candidate to fulfil 100% of the criteria in this job description. We encourage you to apply if you feel you meet the majority of the requirements above. We know that skills evolve over time, so if you have a keen appetite to learn and evolve alongside us over time, come join our team! 

US Benefits & Perks

• Flexible Time Off Policy – Take the time you need
• Enhanced parental leave (16 weeks for birth parent, 8 weeks for non-birth parent at full pay) 
• Regular company events and activities
• Robust Company Sponsored Health & Welfare Benefits
• 401k Plan – 4% employee match
• Enhanced Wellness Program including access to EAP, Wellness Coaching & Wellness Fridays program