Database Administrator - Multi-RDBMS with Programming Skills

About the Role

Wizglobal Ltd seeks an experienced and hands-on Database Administrator to manage, secure, and optimize the relational databases underpinning their financial services platforms. This role combines traditional DBA responsibilities with programming tasks to automate processes and assist engineering teams.

Key Responsibilities

• Manage, monitor, and optimize production RDBMS setups primarily using PostgreSQL, with experience in Oracle and SQL Server across various systems.
• Design and maintain replication, clustering, high availability, and connection pooling configurations such as PgBouncer.
• Lead performance engineering efforts including query tuning, index creation, analyzing execution plans, autovacuum tuning, and resolving locking or long-running queries.
• Plan and implement schema and data migrations, ensuring low or zero downtime deployments supported by thorough impact assessments.
• Develop and maintain stored procedures, triggers, functions, and automation scripts using PL/pgSQL, PL/SQL, T-SQL, Python, or Node.js to support operational and application requirements.
• Implement and validate backup, restore, and disaster recovery plans for both on-premises and cloud database clusters; participate in disaster recovery drills.
• Enforce database security policies, including role-based access controls, encryption, auditing, and compliance with Kenya Data Protection Act 2019 and standards like ISO 27001 and SOC 2.
• Collaborate with engineering teams on data modeling for financial reporting and operations.
• Develop and maintain monitoring and alerting systems for database health using tools such as Elastic Stack or Sentry; conduct root cause analysis for incidents.
• Support Change Data Capture (CDC), ETL workflows, and analytics pipelines integrating technologies like Debezium, Kafka, and ClickHouse.
• Document database system architecture, procedures, standards, and contribute to change management processes.
• Provide ongoing support and mentoring to developers to promote efficient database usage.

Required Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, IT, or a related discipline.
• 3 to 6+ years of hands-on DBA experience in live environments, with PostgreSQL expertise strongly preferred.
• Proficiency with at least one other RDBMS such as Oracle or Microsoft SQL Server, including backups and administration.
• Advanced SQL skills addressing complex queries, optimization, and execution plan analysis.
• Programming experience in languages such as PHP (Laravel), Node.js, Python, or similar, sufficient for scripting and collaborating on applications.
• Deep knowledge of database internals including indexing, transaction isolation, MVCC, locking, and replication.
• Experience with connection pooling (PgBouncer), clustering for high availability, and disaster recovery implementations.
• Familiarity with Linux server management (Ubuntu preferred) and command-line tools.
• Exposure to database activity monitoring and auditing tools like Imperva, ensuring compliance and security.
• Understanding of data protection, encryption, audit logging, and regulatory compliance relevant to the financial sector.
• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills, effective in high-pressure scenarios involving incidents.
• Excellent written and verbal communication for documentation and collaboration.

Preferred Advantages

• Experience in financial, fintech, or asset/fund management industries.
• Knowledge of CDC and streaming mechanisms such as Debezium and Kafka, plus analytics databases like ClickHouse.
• Familiarity with containerization (Docker) and continuous integration/deployment pipelines.
• Experience with monitoring and security information and event management tools like Elastic Stack and Sentry, and intrusion detection systems such as Suricata.
• Possession of related certifications like PostgreSQL, Oracle OCP, or Microsoft SQL Server certifications.

Key Competencies

• Strong ownership and meticulous attention to data accuracy.
• Ability to balance proactive engineering with responsive incident management.
• Collaborative working style engaging cross-functional teams.
• Judicious decision-making in critical, live financial systems.

What We Offer

• Opportunity to contribute to vital financial platforms serving top financial institutions.
• A cooperative engineering environment fostering growth into senior data engineering or platform architecture roles.