The Role:
The DBA Manager is responsible for the operational management, performance, security, and continuous improvement of the organisation’s database services. Reporting into the Head of IT Infrastructure, the role leads the Database Administration (DBA) team and ensures database platforms are reliable, secure, scalable, and aligned with infrastructure standards and business requirements.
The role translates infrastructure strategy into effective database operations, providing strong leadership, technical assurance, and governance across database technologies in both cloud and on‑premise environments.
Responsibilities will include:
Database Services Management
- Lead and manage the day‑to‑day operation of database services across the organisation.
- Ensure high availability, performance, integrity, and reliability of all database platforms.
- Oversee database installation, configuration, patching, upgrades, and lifecycle management.
- Ensure effective backup, recovery, and disaster recovery solutions are in place and regularly tested.
DBA Team Leadership
- Line manage the DBA team, setting clear objectives, priorities, and performance expectations.
- Develop team capability through coaching, mentoring, and skills development.
- Ensure appropriate resourcing, workload management, and resilience within the DBA function.
- Foster a culture of operational excellence, accountability, and continuous improvement.
Performance, Capacity & Reliability
- Oversee database performance monitoring, tuning, and optimisation activities.
- Lead capacity planning and forecasting for database platforms.
- Ensure database services can scale to meet current and future business demand.
- Act as an escalation point for complex or high‑impact database incidents and problems.
Security, Risk & Compliance
- Ensure database environments comply with security policies, regulatory requirements, and best practice.
- Work closely with Information Security, Risk, and Governance teams to manage database‑related risks.
- Ensure appropriate access controls, encryption, and data protection measures are implemented.
- Support audits and assurance activities by providing evidence of effective database controls.
Standards, Governance & Change
- Define and maintain database standards, procedures, and operational documentation.
- Ensure database changes follow change management and release processes.
- Provide technical assurance for database‑related changes, designs, and projects.
- Contribute to infrastructure governance and control activities as required.
Stakeholder & Vendor Management
- Work closely with infrastructure, application, cloud, and service management teams.
- Support projects and transformation initiatives with database expertise.
- Manage relationships with database vendors and third‑party service providers.
- Provide clear reporting on database service performance, risks, and improvement initiatives.
Skills and Experience
- Significant experience in database administration roles, including team leadership or management.
- Strong technical understanding of enterprise database platforms (e.g. SQL Server, Oracle, PostgreSQL, or equivalent).
- Proven experience managing database performance, availability, backup, and recovery.
- Experience operating databases in complex or enterprise environments.
- Strong incident, problem, and change management experience.
- Excellent stakeholder management and communication skills.
- Experience supporting cloud or hybrid database platforms.
- Experience working in regulated environments.
- Knowledge of infrastructure, security, and resilience best practices.
- Relevant database or cloud certifications.
