Job Description:
The Platform Engineering Consultant - Cloud and Database Services designs, builds, and operates cloud data infrastructure as a product—delivering secure, reliable, and scalable database services through automation and self-service. This role blends cloud engineering (Infrastructure-as-Code, networking, observability, and reliability engineering) with hands-on DBA responsibilities to ensure cloud workloads and database platforms meet performance, availability, security, and compliance requirements. The engineer partners with infrastructure, application, data, and security teams to standardize patterns, reduce operational toil, and enable teams to ship changes safely across development, test, and production environments.
Key technologies: Azure (primary) and AWS cloud platforms, Azure SQL (SQL Database/Managed Instance), SQL Server, Oracle, MongoDB
How you will make an impact:
Cloud Platform & Database Service Operations
- Own the cloud platform lifecycle in Azure and database lifecycle in hybrid environments (provisioning, configuration, upgrades, patching, and decommissioning) with supporting capabilities in AWS.
- Design, deploy, and operate Azure-based cloud infrastructure aligned with established architectures and governance standards. Own production workloads and services, implement Infrastructure as Code and automation, optimize performance and cost, and serve as an escalation point for complex operational issues.
- Build and maintain cloud-based data pipelines supporting ingestion, transformation, and delivery of data for analytics and operational use cases. Optimize pipelines for reliability and performance, and collaborate with application and analytics teams to meet data requirements.
- Perform and coordinate core DBA operations: maintenance windows, patching/updates, configuration management, and scheduling/ownership of operational jobs (e.g., SQL Server Agent or equivalent tooling).
- Administer cloud and database platform access controls (users/roles, least privilege), assist with audits, and implement standardized onboarding/offboarding processes.
- Implement observability for database services (metrics, logs, traces, alerting) using tools such as Azure Monitor/Log Analytics and AWS CloudWatch; proactively manage health, capacity, and performance.
- Contribute to financial initiatives for cloud and database platforms. Plan and manage storage, compute, and licensing/cost consumption; optimize for performance and cloud spend using Azure Cost Management (and AWS cost tools as needed), tagging, and chargeback/showback practices.
Performance Engineering & Scalability
- Tune managed and self-hosted databases (query plans, indexing, partitioning, configuration) to meet latency and throughput targets.
- Execute and automate database maintenance practices (index/statistics maintenance, integrity checks, housekeeping) and establish performance baselines.
- Diagnose and remediate bottlenecks across the stack (application, network, storage, compute) using data-driven analysis and load testing.
- Plan and execute database upgrades and migrations (cloud adoption, version upgrades, cross-environment refreshes) with minimal downtime and clear rollback strategies.
- Design scalable patterns for OLTP and analytics workloads, including read replicas, caching, and right-sized tiers.
Resiliency, Backup & Disaster Recovery
- Implement automated backup, restore, and point-in-time recovery strategies aligned to RPO/RTO objectives.
- Own restore execution for incidents and user requests (PITR, logical restores, and cross-environment restores) and continuously improve restore speed and reliability.
- Regularly test restores and disaster recovery runbooks; perform game days and document outcomes.
- Engineer multi-region and cross-zone resiliency patterns where required, balancing availability, consistency, and cost.
Security, Governance & Compliance
- Own cloud and database platform security posture: identity/access (e.g., Azure AD/RBAC), network controls, secrets management (e.g., Azure Key Vault), and least-privilege role design.
- Implement and operate governance controls such as auditing, data classification, retention, and masking/tokenization as required for sensitive data.
- Partner with security to manage vulnerability remediation, configuration baselines, and continuous compliance reporting (e.g., Microsoft Defender for Cloud), across Azure and AWS.
- Ensure vendor licensing, data retention, and governance requirements are met across managed and self-hosted database services.
Platform Enablement & Engineering Standards
- Define and maintain reference architectures, standards, and guardrails for database services and data infrastructure.
- Build self-service provisioning workflows and templates using Infrastructure-as-Code (e.g., Bicep/ARM, Terraform) for database services and supporting infrastructure where appropriate.
- Partner with application and data engineering teams on schema changes, migration strategies, and reliable release patterns.
- Review schema/query changes for operational readiness (indexing strategy, partitioning, resource usage) and advise teams on best practices.
Automation, Infrastructure-as-Code & CI/CD
- Automate provisioning, patching, backups, scaling, and routine maintenance (including DBA runbooks such as index/statistics maintenance and access grants) using scripts, IaC, and workflow orchestration (Azure-first, with AWS where applicable).
- Continuously improve platform reliability and developer experience by reducing manual effort, standardizing patterns, and measuring operational toil.
Collaboration, Support & Incident Response
- Serve as the escalation point for cloud and database platform incidents; lead triage, root cause analysis, and corrective actions.
- Partner with infrastructure, application, data, and security teams to deliver integrated solutions.
- Contribute to standards, documentation, and runbooks, mentor junior engineers, and provide technical input into platform improvements and roadmap discussions.
What you will bring to the role:
Required Skills & Experience
Technical Skills
- Proven experience in cloud/platform engineering, SRE, or database/data infrastructure engineering roles.
Strong understanding of database platform fundamentals (availability, consistency, replication, backups, security, and performance).
- Experience operating managed database services in cloud environments—especially Azure SQL Database/Managed Instance—with supporting experience in AWS (e.g., RDS/Aurora) including networking, IAM, monitoring, and cost management.
- Strong SQL skills (e.g., T-SQL) and familiarity with Oracle (PL/SQL) and MongoDB query patterns; experience supporting safe change management (migrations, versioning, and deployment strategies).
- Strong operational discipline: monitoring/alerting, incident response, postmortems, and continuous improvement.
Experience provisioning infrastructure using Infrastructure-as-Code and automation (e.g., Terraform, Bicep/ARM; CloudFormation as needed).
- Working knowledge of database-specific HA/DR tooling (e.g., SQL Server Always On, Oracle Data Guard/RMAN concepts) and cloud-native equivalents.
- Knowledge of cloud and database security best practices (IAM, network segmentation, encryption, secrets management).
- Experience with cloud networking patterns for data services (e.g., VNets/VPCs, private endpoints/Private Link, firewall rules, DNS) and connectivity to on-premises environments.
- Experience with containerization and orchestration (Docker, Kubernetes) and supporting stateful workloads where appropriate.
- Experience with automation and DevOps practices (CI/CD, GitOps, testing, and release orchestration).
Analytical & Professional Skills
- Excellent attention to detail and commitment to data integrity.
- Strong problem-solving and critical-thinking skills.
- Ability to multitask and manage priorities in a dynamic environment.
- Effective communication skills, with the ability to simplify complex concepts.
- Collaborative mindset and ability to work across multiple IT disciplines.
Education & Certifications
- Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, or a related field (or equivalent experience).
- At least 5 years in a similar role, preferably in a high-tech manufacturing environment.
- Relevant certifications are desirable, such as:
- Azure certifications (e.g., Azure Administrator, Azure Solutions Architect, Azure DevOps Engineer)
- AWS certifications (e.g., AWS Solutions Architect) a plus
- Database certifications (e.g., Microsoft/Azure Database certifications, Oracle OCP, MongoDB certifications) a plus
- DevOps/SRE certifications (e.g., Kubernetes CKA/CKAD, HashiCorp Terraform Associate) a plus
Preferred / Nice-to-Have Qualifications
- Strong scripting and automation skills (e.g., Python, PowerShell, Bash) and configuration management (e.g., Ansible).
- Experience with platform engineering practices: self-service, golden paths, service catalogs, and internal developer platforms.
- Experience with data infrastructure components beyond databases (e.g., messaging/streaming, caching, data integration) is a plus.
