Database Administrator, Infrastructure in Manchester

Applicants must be authorized to work for any employer in the country in which the role is being hired. We are unable to sponsor or take over sponsorship of an employment visa at this time.

Mark43’s mission is to empower communities and their governments with new technologies that improve the safety and quality of life for all. We build powerful, scalable, and elegant software that sets a new standard for the tools upon which first responders rely. Our users are diverse, and we are committed to embracing diversity of thought, experience, and background within our team.

About This Role

We are seeking a UK-based Senior / Staff Database Administrator to help lead the design, reliability, security, and operational maturity of Mark43’s production database infrastructure for UK public safety customers. In this role, you will serve as a senior technical owner for database reliability and performance. You will partner with engineering, infrastructure, security, delivery, and customer teams to ensure that Mark43’s database systems are stable, scalable, secure, observable, and ready to support mission‑critical public safety workloads. You will independently own complex database initiatives, mentor others, provide technical direction, influence cross‑team architecture, lead high‑impact reliability programs, and serve as a trusted authority across the organization. Because this role may involve work with UK police customers, candidates must be eligible to obtain and maintain the required UK police and/or government security vetting, including NPPV3 and, where applicable, SC clearance.

What You’ll Do

• Own and improve the reliability, performance, security, and scalability of production database systems.
• Lead database monitoring, alerting, capacity planning, backup, recovery, replication, and disaster recovery practices.
• Identify, diagnose, and resolve complex database performance and availability issues.
• Partner with engineering teams on schema design, indexing strategies, query optimization, and safe database change management.
• Lead technical planning for database migrations, upgrades, scaling strategies, and operational improvements.
• Improve infrastructure‑as‑code, automation, observability, and repeatability across database operations.
• Define and maintain database runbooks, operational standards, and production readiness criteria.
• Participate in and, when appropriate, lead database‑related incident response, post‑incident reviews, and remediation planning.
• Collaborate with security, compliance, and delivery teams to meet customer, regulatory, and vetting requirements.
• Provide technical guidance and mentorship to engineers, DBAs, and operational teams.
• Represent database reliability concerns in architecture reviews, roadmap planning, and customer‑readiness discussions.
• Help build the operational foundation required to support UK police customers and future UK public safety partners.

What You’ll Need

• Significant professional experience administering MySQL or similar relational databases in production environments.
• Deep experience operating cloud‑hosted database platforms, preferably AWS RDS, Aurora, or Azure database services.
• Strong expertise in database performance tuning, query optimization, replication, backup, recovery, and high availability.
• Experience designing and operating database infrastructure for complex cloud‑based software applications.
• Experience with infrastructure as code, automation, observability, and production operations.
• Strong understanding of cloud infrastructure, networking, security, access controls, and operational risk.
• Ability to influence engineering teams and guide database design decisions across services.
• Strong incident management skills and sound judgment during high‑pressure production events.
• Clear written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to explain complex technical tradeoffs to technical and non‑technical audiences.
• Demonstrated ability to mentor teammates and improve team‑wide technical practices.
• Eligibility and willingness to complete UK police vetting requirements for customer‑facing public safety work.

UK Security Vetting Requirement

This role may require access to UK police customer systems, infrastructure, operational data, or secure customer environments. The successful candidate must be eligible to obtain and maintain the appropriate security clearance before accessing police data, systems, or premises. Depending on the assignment, this may include NPPV3 clearance for work involving UK police systems, infrastructure, or operational data, or SC clearance where work involves central government, cross‑agency, or SECRET‑level systems.

People Who Thrive at Mark43

• Humble, open, and curious.
• Attentive, active listeners.
• Resilient when facing challenging operational problems.
• Enthusiastic collaborators who believe in shared ownership.
• Comfortable working through uncertainty.
• Passionate about personal and professional growth.
• Eager to support teammates and share knowledge.
• Able to raise the technical bar while bringing others along.

Preferred Experience

• Experience supporting AWS RDS, Aurora, or Azure database platforms at scale.
• Experience with microservices‑based architectures and distributed systems.
• Experience supporting SaaS platforms, public sector customers, law enforcement customers, or regulated environments.
• Experience with compliance‑sensitive environments, security reviews, customer audits, or government delivery programs.
• Experience leading database migrations, major version upgrades, disaster recovery planning, or reliability programs.
• Experience defining SLOs, SLAs, operational metrics, and production readiness standards.

Compensation and Benefits

Total compensation for this role is market competitive and may include base salary, bonus opportunity, equity, and a comprehensive benefits package. Final compensation will be determined based on experience, location, skills, and level.

Equal Opportunity Employer

Mark43 is an equal opportunity employer. We value diverse perspectives and are committed to building an inclusive environment for all employees.