Manager, Systems and Database Engineering

The Manager of Systems and Database Engineering leads the SDE team in operating Pepperdine's PeopleSoft Campus Solutions, Oracle database infrastructure, and OCI tenancy. The role owns system stability, security, performance, and compliance across PeopleSoft, HR and Financial Systems, iHub, and related integrations. The manager must have hands-on OCI knowledge spanning tenancy design, networking, IAM, high availability, middleware, monitoring, DR, patching, and automation. Staff development, cross-functional coordination, and vendor management are also core responsibilities.

Duties

• LEADERSHIP AND ADMINISTRATION:
  • Provides strong, consistent leadership to the Systems and Database Engineering team.
  • Sets clear departmental goals and objectives aligned with the strategic priorities of SDE, Enterprise Information Systems (EIS), Information Technology, and the University.
  • Holds regular structured 1:1 meetings with direct reports.
  • Establishes, maintains, and follows through on meeting agendas.
  • Develops direct reports through goal-setting, performance feedback, and skills development planning.
  • Delegates tasks with appropriate guidance and empowers staff to take ownership of projects, problems, and professional growth.
  • Holds team members and external vendors accountable for outcomes, deadlines, and professional conduct.
  • Reviews and submits timely, complete paperwork and processes, including status reports, timesheets, financial activities, and mid-year and annual performance assessments.
  • Maintains organized team workflows and project tracking in designated tools.
  • Manages hiring and onboarding activities for open positions, including initiating and completing candidate review processes on schedule.
• PLANNING AND PROJECT MANAGEMENT:
  • Works with the Sr Director of EIS and IT leadership to establish a vision and roadmap for Systems and Database Engineering, including both reactive operational priorities and proactive strategic initiatives.
  • Manages multiple concurrent projects, including system upgrades, environment builds, security remediation, and cross-team integrations.
  • Estimates time and resources required.
  • Tracks assignments, milestones, and dependencies.
  • Communicates status regularly to supervisor, leadership, and stakeholders.
  • Uses project management software and methodology to maintain visibility into all active and queued work.
  • Identifies initiatives and allocates team capacity to advance them alongside operational demands.
  • Coordinates with the project management office (PMO) and other IT areas on planning standards, change management, communications, and post-implementation monitoring.
• SYSTEMS AND DATABASE ADMINISTRATION:
  • Oversees the design, implementation, and ongoing support of the University's ERP infrastructure, including PeopleSoft middle-tier components (WebLogic/web servers, Tuxedo/application servers, Jolt ports, Process Scheduler, Integration Broker, search services, and load balancers), Oracle Databases on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI), and associated production and non-production environments.
  • Leads the team in maintaining system stability, availability, performance, security, and compliance across a complex OCI tenancy.
  • Provides oversight for OCI compartments, IAM policies, dynamic groups, VCNs, subnets, route tables, security lists, network security groups, gateways, FastConnect/VPN connectivity, load balancers, certificates, Object Storage, File Storage, Block Volumes, backups, and logging/monitoring services.
  • Directs monthly patching cycles.
  • Coordinates with Information Security Office (ISO), Windows Administration, Networking, and application teams for hardening, vulnerability remediation, compliance verification, and change scheduling.
  • Oversees disaster recovery architecture and testing, including Active Data Guard, backup/restore validation, runbooks, and recovery-time/recovery-point objectives.
  • Manages Oracle database patching, tuning, backup verification, user access, capacity planning, and growth planning.
  • Serves as a subject matter expert and escalation point for complex technical issues across OCI, database, operating system, middleware, network, and PeopleSoft application layers.
  • Provides mentorship and technical guidance to team members.
• INNOVATION AND SOLUTIONS:
  • Studies the feasibility of new project requests to guide Database Engineering operations.
  • Designs, develops, and implements innovative and effective solutions for the University, including planning, analysis, design, data modeling, coding, implementation, testing, training, documentation, and maintenance.
  • Leads automation of repeatable OCI and PeopleSoft infrastructure tasks, including environment provisioning, cloning, configuration drift detection, patch orchestration, backup verification, certificate renewal, monitoring thresholds, and operational runbooks.
  • Supervises the development and use of automation through Terraform, OCI Resource Manager, Ansible, Python, shell scripting, PeopleSoft Cloud Manager, Deployment Packages (DPKs), Puppet, Oracle Enterprise Manager (OEM), OCI Monitoring/Logging, Operations Insights, and related OCI-native tooling.
• COMMUNICATION AND RELATIONSHIPS:
  • Represents SDE professionally and constructively in multi-team projects and meetings.
  • Communicates clearly and constructively with internal stakeholders, leadership, and external partners.
  • Conducts outreach to stakeholders to determine needs and build strong, collaborative relationships.
  • Promotes professionalism across SDE and models the standard for respectful, results-oriented engagement with colleagues and vendors.
• COLLABORATION:
  • Provides backup support and assistance to other team members.
  • Collaborates with co-workers and University colleagues on departmental, division-wide, and institutional projects.
  • Shares process information and makes informal recommendations on how to improve processes and overall job execution within the team/department.
• PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT:
  • Attends training sessions, vendor presentations, user group meetings, conferences, and seminars.
  • Engages regularly in individual professional development related activities to remain current with industry technology trends and work processes.
• COMMITTEES AND BEYOND JOB DUTIES:
  • Volunteers to undertake tasks that stretch the employee's capabilities.
  • Serves on various committees within the Information Technology division.
  • Participates in external University committees.
  • Performs other related duties as assigned.
• UNIVERSITY MISSION:
  • Understands and supports the Christian mission of the University.
  • Upholds the University mission through team, location, atmosphere, and work performed.

The above information has been designed to indicate the general nature and level of work performed by employees within this classification. It is not designed to contain or be interpreted as a comprehensive inventory of all duties, responsibilities, and qualifications required of employees assigned to this job.

Skills and Qualifications

Required:

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Management Information Systems, Engineering, or a related field (or equivalent professional experience).
• Database Architecture and Cloud Infrastructure:
  • Minimum of five (5) years of deep administrative and architectural experience with enterprise Oracle Database systems supporting mission-critical applications, including high-availability configurations.
  • High proficiency with Oracle Database 19c/23c or current supported Oracle Database releases, including Oracle Real Application Clusters (RAC), Active Data Guard, RMAN, and Multitenant container architectures (CDBs/PDBs).
  • Proven experience deploying, managing, securing, and troubleshooting database workloads natively within Oracle Cloud
  • Infrastructure (OCI), including OCI Base Database Service and related storage, backup, network, monitoring, and security services.
• OCI Tenancy and PeopleSoft Infrastructure:
  
  • Demonstrated experience supporting complex PeopleSoft or comparable ERP environments within OCI, including production and non-production environments, middleware tiers, database tiers, integration components, batch/process scheduler workloads, and disaster recovery architecture.
  • Working knowledge of OCI tenancy administration, including compartments, IAM policies, groups, dynamic groups, networking, route tables, security lists, network security groups, load balancers, certificates, Object Storage, File Storage, Block Volumes, backup policies, monitoring, logging, and alarms.
• Infrastructure as Code (IaC) and Automation:
  
  • Minimum of five (5) years of experience defining, provisioning, and maintaining secure cloud infrastructure, DB systems, and storage via code, such as Terraform and OCI Resource Manager.
  • Strong background utilizing configuration management and programmatic automation tools, such as Ansible, Python, and shell scripting, to orchestrate repetitive database and infrastructure lifecycle operations, including patching, environment cloning, backup verification, and self-healing systems.
• Advanced Oracle and OCI Cloud Architecture:
  • Deep architectural knowledge of Oracle Database (19c/23c or current supported Oracle Database releases), RAC, Multitenant, Active Data Guard, RMAN backup/recovery, Data Guard Broker, and OCI-native database hosting services.
• OCI Tenancy Operations:
  • Strong understanding of compartments, IAM policy design, dynamic groups, service gateways, NAT gateways, DRG, VCNs, private/public subnets, network security groups, security lists, route tables, load balancers, private DNS, certificates, Object Storage, File Storage, Block Volumes, backup policies, Monitoring, Logging, Alarms, Events, Notifications, and cost/capacity management.
• PeopleSoft Infrastructure Stack:
  • Working knowledge of PeopleSoft architecture, including WebLogic, Tuxedo, Process Scheduler, Integration Broker, search services, report repositories, Jolt ports, environment refreshes, application/database dependencies, and production cutover considerations.
• Software-Defined Infrastructure:
  • Strong understanding of Infrastructure as Code (IaC) principles.
  • Proficiency in utilizing Terraform, OCI Resource Manager, or similar tooling to programmatically build, tear down, and modify OCI resources, cloud storage volumes, database systems, compute instances, and network components.
• Declarative Configuration and Scripting:
  • Strong competency in automating system patching, environment cloning, backup validation, monitoring thresholds, operational runbooks, and routine PeopleSoft/DBA lifecycle operations.
• Operating Systems and System Diagnostics:
  • Proven experience administering Linux, performing database capacity planning, managing kernel parameters, diagnosing performance bottlenecks, and implementing enterprise monitoring best practices.
• Systems and Database Security:
  • Knowledge of network security, transit encryption, database access controls, database auditing, secrets management, key management, certificate management, vulnerability remediation, and general Internet standards.
• Analytical Troubleshooting:
  • Proven analytical and problem-solving abilities to troubleshoot complex performance and availability issues across the full technology stack, including OCI, storage, operating system, database, network, middleware, integration, and application layers.
  • Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI)
  • OCI Console and CLI
  • Oracle Database 19c/23c or current supported Oracle Database release
  • OCI Base Database Service
  • Linux
  • WebLog
  • Tuxedo
  • PeopleSoft Process Scheduler
  • Integration Broker
  • Terraform
  • OCI Resource Manager
  • Ansible
  • Python
  • Shell scripting
  • Oracle Enterprise Manager
  • OCI Monitoring, Logging, Alarms, Events, Notifications, Object Storage, File Storage, Block Volumes, Load Balancer, Vault/KMS, Bastion, and IAM.

Preferred:

• Scale and ERP Platform Experience:
  
  • Twelve (12) or more years of experience managing enterprise-scale Oracle Database environments in OCI and supporting complex middle-tier Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) platform architectures, specifically Oracle PeopleSoft Campus Solutions, HCM, FSCM, and related integration platforms.
  • Experience supporting PeopleSoft environments with multiple environments, high concurrency, batch processing, integrations, term/period close windows, scheduled maintenance windows, and formal change management controls.
• Advanced OCI Architecture:
  
  • Hands-on experience designing or operating complex OCI tenancies, including hub-and-spoke or segmented networking, DRG, FastConnect or site-to-site VPN, private endpoints, load balancers, WAF, Bastion, Vault/KMS, Cloud Guard, Security Zones, Vulnerability Scanning, Logging Analytics, Operations Insights, and Observability and Management services.
• Enterprise Automation Frameworks:
  
  • Hands-on experience implementing PeopleSoft infrastructure automation using PeopleSoft Cloud Manager (PCM), Deployment Packages (DPKs), Puppet, Automated Configuration Manager (ACM), Terraform, OCI Resource Manager, Ansible, Python, and scripting frameworks.
  • Experience implementing rolling patching, reduced-downtime patching, automated environment refreshes, certificate renewal automation, backup validation, and infrastructure drift remediation.
• Professional Certifications:
  
  • OCI Architect Professional or OCI Enterprise Architect Professional.
  • OCI Database Cloud Service Professional.
  • Oracle Database Certified Professional (OCP) for Oracle Database 19c or currently supported Oracle Database release.
  • OCI Security Professional, OCI DevOps Professional, or OCI Foundations.
• Leadership:
  
  • Demonstrated experience directly managing technical staff, including setting performance goals, establishing Service Level Objectives(SLOs), delivering constructive feedback, and holding team members accountable for outcomes.
  • Experience within a higher education IT environment.
• Vendor and Project Coordination:
  
  • Demonstrated experience managing external enterprise vendors, managed service providers, or consulting resources, including scoping statements of work, tracking deliverables, and maintaining collaborative professional relationships.
• PeopleSoft Database Internals:
  • Direct experience managing Oracle databases that support PeopleSoft environments such as Campus Solutions, HCM, and FSCM.
  • Deep understanding of PeopleSoft-specific database behaviors, including heavy temporary table usage, high-concurrency batch processing, Process Scheduler demand, Integration Broker messaging, report repositories, and PeopleTools schema upgrade impacts.
• PeopleTools Lifecycle Management:
  • Practical experience coordinating and executing PeopleSoft PeopleTools upgrades, applying PeopleSoft Update Manager (PUM) images, using Change Assistant, and coordinating database, middleware, application, and testing dependencies.
• Advanced OCI Operations:
  • Experience with OCI Cloud Guard, Vulnerability Scanning, Bastion, Vault/KMS, Security Zones, Logging Analytics, Operations Insights, Service Connector Hub, Events, Functions, Resource Manager, Budgets, and tagging/governance standards.
• Observability and Telemetry:
  • Experience designing and implementing performance monitoring and SLO dashboards across PeopleSoft, Oracle Database, OCI infrastructure, WebLogic, Tuxedo, Process Scheduler, load balancers, and integration components.
• Vulnerability Management:
  • Experience collaborating with security teams to identify, prioritize, and remediate system vulnerabilities using Qualys, OCI Vulnerability Scanning, or comparable enterprise vulnerability scanning platforms.
• Search and Integration Middleware:
  • Familiarity with OpenSearch or Elasticsearch cluster administration, load balancer configurations including SSL termination and traffic routing, and middleware integration tools like Oracle Integration Broker.
• ERP Systems and Middleware:
  • Oracle PeopleSoft (HCM, FSCM, Campus Solutions, PeopleTools 8.6x), Oracle Integration Broker, WebLogic Server, Tuxedo, Process Scheduler, PeopleSoft Cloud Manager, DPKs, Puppet, and ACM.
• PeopleSoft Campus Solutions, HCM, FSCM, PeopleTools 8.6x, PeopleSoft Cloud Manager, Deployment Packages (DPKs), Puppet, Automated Configuration Manager (ACM), Change Assistant, PeopleSoft Update Manager (PUM), Oracle Data Guard Broker, RMAN, Operations Insights, Logging Analytics, Cloud Guard, Security Zones, OCI Vulnerability Scanning, Service Connector Hub, FastConnect/VPN, DRG, WAF, OpenSearch/Elasticsearch, Qualys or comparable vulnerability scanning tools, and ITSM/change management platforms.

This is a Regular, Exempt, 40 hour per week position.

Expected Pay Range: $145,000 - $172,000 per year 

The above pay range reflects what Pepperdine University reasonably expects to pay for this position at time of posting. Actual compensation may vary based on relevant factors such as work experience, market conditions, education/training, and skill level. In addition to base pay, Pepperdine offers a robust and highly competitive benefits package.

Pepperdine is an Equal Employment Opportunity employer and does not unlawfully discriminate on the basis of any status or condition protected by applicable federal, state, or local law. Pepperdine is committed to providing a work environment free from all forms of unlawful discrimination and harassment. Engaging in unlawful discrimination or harassment will result in appropriate disciplinary action, up to and including dismissal from the University.

Pepperdine is religiously affiliated with the Churches of Christ. It is the purpose of Pepperdine to pursue the very highest employment and academic standards within a context that celebrates and extends the spiritual and ethical ideals of the Christian faith. While students, faculty, and staff represent many religious backgrounds, Pepperdine is permitted under applicable law and reserves the right to seek, hire, and promote persons who support the goals and mission of the institution, including the right to prefer co-religionists who support Pepperdine's Christian mission.

Qualified individuals should be able to show respect for workplace differences, and have the ability to work effectively with individuals from different backgrounds.

Offers of employment are contingent upon successful completion of a criminal, education, and employment screening. The University conducts such screenings in compliance with applicable laws and with the objectives of evaluating risk and supporting a safe environment for students, faculty, staff, and guests; safeguarding key University assets including people, property, information, and the University’s reputation; and providing comprehensive job-related information to University leaders to enable them to make prudent hiring decisions. Individuals will be required to disclose any criminal convictions on a designated form after receiving a conditional offer of employment; failure to disclose accurate information may result in withdrawal of the offer or termination of employment. Qualified individuals with criminal histories will be considered for employment in compliance with applicable laws, including the Los Angeles County Fair Chance Ordinance.