Database Administrator

About Crown Interactive

Crown Interactive is a Nigeria-based software company specializing in delivering high-quality digital infrastructure solutions tailored for the African market. Established in the UK in 2005 and refocused on Africa since 2012, the company excels in designing sovereign digital platforms for governments and vital sectors. With over two decades of experience, Crown Interactive stands as Africa's premier partner in government digital transformation through innovative and effective execution.

Role Summary

We are seeking a skilled and meticulous Database Administrator to strengthen our expanding technology team. This role centers on ensuring the uptime, security, and optimal performance of critical databases integral to our diverse SaaS, government, enterprise, and power sector solutions. The successful candidate will collaborate closely with engineering, DevOps, product, and business divisions to tackle complex database issues, enhance system responsiveness, and guarantee secured access to accurate data.

Key Responsibilities

• Manage installation, configuration, upgrades, patching, and maintenance of database management systems.
• Administer environments including production, staging, testing, and development databases.
• Create and maintain databases, schemas, tables, indexes, views, stored procedures, and other database objects.
• Oversee user roles, permissions, and implement stringent access management policies.
• Continuously monitor database health, capacity, availability, and performance metrics.
• Conduct routine database maintenance tasks and optimize system operation for reliability.
• Diagnose and resolve performance bottlenecks such as slow queries and locking conflicts through query tuning and indexing strategies.
• Develop and manage comprehensive backup and recovery plans, ensuring compliance with defined Recovery Point and Time Objectives.
• Support disaster recovery initiatives and maintain high-availability configurations.
• Enforce security protocols including encryption, auditing, access controls, and vulnerability remediation aligned with organizational and regulatory standards.
• Collaborate with architects and development teams on database design and schema changes, ensuring scalability and maintainability within a change management framework.
• Provide advanced production database support, including incident investigation and root cause analysis, participating in maintenance and on-call rotations as necessary.
• Implement monitoring and alerting tools to proactively manage capacity and maintain data integrity.
• Maintain detailed technical documentation, runbooks, and governance policies governing database assets.

Required Skills and Knowledge

• Extensive proficiency with relational database systems such as PostgreSQL, Microsoft SQL Server, MySQL/MariaDB, and Oracle Database.
• Strong expertise in SQL, indexing, query optimization, stored procedures, replication, clustering, partitioning, and backup/recovery methodologies.
• Experience with cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, Google Cloud) and server environments including Linux and Windows.
• Familiarity with containerized environments using Docker and Kubernetes is advantageous.
• Knowledge of DevOps practices including version control (Git), CI/CD pipelines, infrastructure and database monitoring, logging, and observability tools.
• Sound understanding of database security principles, including access control, encryption, auditing, and privileged account management.

Qualifications and Experience

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, IT, Computer/Software Engineering, or related discipline.
• 7 to 8 years of practical experience in database administration or engineering within complex production environments.
• Prior experience in sectors such as technology, SaaS, government, telecommunications, finance, utilities, or similarly demanding industries.
• Strong background in high-availability systems, performance tuning, backup and recovery, and security compliance.
• Exposure to Agile and DevOps environments is beneficial.
• Handling large-scale transaction processing systems is a plus.
• Possession of relevant professional certifications in database administration, cloud services, or IT is advantageous.

Additional Information

The role requires a proactive and technically capable individual passionate about database reliability, security, and continuous improvement. Participation in incident management, capacity planning, and business continuity exercises is expected. This position is based in Lagos, Nigeria and is full-time on-site.