1. SQL Server Administration and Operations

• Manage SQL Server databases through all lifecycle environments (development, UAT, production).

• Install, configure, maintain, patch, and upgrade SQL Server instances and related components.

• Configure and maintain SQL Server services, Agent jobs, maintenance plans, linked servers, operators, alerts, and database mail.

• Monitor SQL Server health, performance, capacity, availability, storage, jobs, backups, and replication.

• Investigate and resolve production incidents, service outages, performance degradation, blocking, deadlocks, and corruption risks.

• Maintain operational documentation, runbooks, inventory, and change records.

• Participate in planned maintenance windows, after-hours support, release deployments, and on-call rotations.

2. High Availability, Disaster Recovery, and Resilience

• Design, configure, maintain, and troubleshoot HA/DR solutions (Always On Availability Groups, Failover Cluster Instances, replication, log shipping).

• Monitor and validate HA components (replicas, listeners, quorum, failover behavior, synchronization health).

• Maintain log shipping configuration, backup copy schedules, and failover readiness.

• Perform DR testing, failover validation, and recovery validation.

• Define and support RPO and RTO objectives in partnership with business and risk teams.

• Maintain documented recovery procedures for restore, failover, and rollback scenarios.

• Ensure production and DR environments remain aligned (logins, permissions, jobs, etc.).

3. Backup, Restore, Recovery, and Data Protection

• Design and maintain backup strategies (full, differential, transaction log, copy-only).

• Maintain transaction log backup frequency and retention aligned to business requirements.

• Perform regular restore tests to validate backup integrity and recoverability.

• Troubleshoot backup/restore failures, including VSS/application-aware backup issues.

• Work with enterprise backup platforms (e.g., Veeam) for application-aware backups.

• Maintain restore procedures for same-server, alternate-server, point-in-time, and object-level recovery.

• Ensure monitoring alerts clearly identify failed or missed backups.

4. Performance Tuning, Query Optimisation, and Developer Support

• Assist developers with complex query tuning, indexing strategy, and execution plan analysis.

• Troubleshoot blocking, deadlocks, wait statistics, parameter sniffing, and memory/CPU pressure.

• Use native SQL Server tools to identify performance bottlenecks and root causes.

• Review inefficient queries, missing indexes, fragmentation, and high-cost workloads.

• Isolate issues (database, code, infrastructure, storage, network, or external dependencies).

• Support release deployments with impact assessment, rollback planning, and validation.

• Promote database design standards that improve performance and scalability.

5. Partitioning, Data Lifecycle, and Large Database Management

• Design, maintain, and troubleshoot table partitioning strategies for large/high-growth databases.

• Implement and maintain partition functions, schemes, indexes, and staging tables.

• Automate partition management (rolling window, archive movement, compression, cleanup).

• Work with teams to define data retention, archive, and purge requirements.

• Optimize large-table performance via partitioning, indexing, compression, and statistics.

• Monitor database growth, filegroup usage, and long-term capacity requirements.

• Document partitioning standards and operational checks.

6. Security, Encryption, and Key Management

• Manage SQL Server authentication, authorization, roles, permissions, and least-privilege access.

• Implement and troubleshoot Transparent Data Encryption (TDE), backup encryption, and dependencies.

• Manage certificates, asymmetric/symmetric keys, database master keys, and secure key backup.

• Maintain key management documentation (ownership, rotation, restore, recovery).

• Ensure encryption keys and certificates are protected and tested as part of DR readiness.

• Support auditing, vulnerability remediation, security reviews, and data protection requirements.

• Investigate unauthorized access, failed logins, permission issues, and encryption errors.

7. Automation, Scripting, and Operational Improvement

• Develop and maintain PowerShell/T-SQL scripts for health checks, reporting, partition management, and validation.

• Automate recurring checks for job status, backups, blocking, HA health, and key expiry.

• Track issues and maintain repeatable support processes.

• Contribute to continuous improvement initiatives to reduce manual effort and improve stability.

8. Monitoring, Capacity Planning, and Operational Reporting

• Configure and maintain monitoring for SQL Server health, performance, HA/DR, and security events.

• Perform capacity planning for databases, storage, memory, CPU, tempdb, and backups.

• Maintain operational dashboards, alerts, and reports for critical services.

• Identify recurring risks and capacity pressure points before they become outages.

• Collaborate with server, VMware, SAN, backup, network, and application teams on infrastructure dependencies.

9. Cloud, Azure SQL, and Hybrid Database Services

• Support future planning for cloud-based database platforms (Azure SQL DB, Managed Instance, SQL on Azure VMs).

• Understand Azure storage, backup, networking, private connectivity, and identity integration.

• Assist with cloud readiness assessments, migration planning, and performance comparisons.

• Troubleshoot hybrid connectivity, DNS, firewall, authentication, and performance issues.

• Work with cloud and infrastructure teams on secure, supportable architectures.

10. Documentation, Standards, and Mentorship

• Author scripts and documentation for administration, DR, architecture, and operational procedures.

• Maintain SQL Server standards for builds, backups, security, HA, and monitoring.

• Share expertise and provide mentorship to peers and junior team members.

• Cross-train to improve broader support capability across infrastructure and database teams.

• 10+ years of Microsoft SQL Server administration experience in enterprise/production environments.

• Strong performance tuning and optimisation using native monitoring and troubleshooting tools.

• Strong T-SQL scripting, stored procedure, trigger, indexing, and execution plan analysis.

• Strong experience with backups, restores, recovery models, and point-in-time recovery.

• Deep knowledge of HA/DR: Always On Availability Groups, failover clustering, replication, log shipping.

• Hands-on experience with SQL Server security, encryption (TDE), certificates, and key management.

• Experience with partitioning strategies and automation for large/high-growth databases.

• Experience with Windows Server and Active Directory dependencies.

• Ability to assist developers with complex query tuning and production investigations.

• Ability to work independently, multitask, and context-switch effectively.

• Excellent written and verbal communication skills.

Preferred Certifications

• Microsoft Certified: Azure Database Administrator Associate (or equivalent experience).

• Microsoft SQL Server administration, performance tuning, or data platform certifications.

• Microsoft Azure Administrator or Azure Solutions-related certification.

• ITIL Foundation.