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Key Responsibilities and Required Skills for Database Manager

💰 $80,000 - $150,000 (varies by location & experience)

ITDatabaseManagementData Engineering

🎯 Role Definition

The Database Manager is responsible for leading database operations and strategy to ensure secure, high-performance, and highly available data platforms. This role combines hands-on database administration (DBA) expertise—across relational and NoSQL systems—with people and project leadership: capacity planning, performance tuning, backup & recovery, disaster recovery planning, cloud migration, security and compliance, and collaboration with engineering, analytics, and business stakeholders. The ideal candidate has a track record of managing teams of DBAs/engineers, executing database migrations, optimizing query performance, and enforcing operational standards and disaster recovery processes.

📈 Career Progression

Typical Career Path

Entry Point From:

  • Senior Database Administrator (Senior DBA) with multi-engine experience (SQL Server, Oracle, PostgreSQL).
  • Lead Database Engineer or Data Platform Engineer responsible for operations and automation.
  • Systems Architect / Data Architect with strong database administration background.

Advancement To:

  • Director of Database Services / Director of Data Platform
  • Head of Data / Head of Data Operations
  • VP of Engineering or VP of Data Platforms

Lateral Moves:

  • Data Architect / Enterprise Data Architect
  • Cloud Database Engineer / Cloud Platform Manager
  • DevOps or Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) Manager focused on data platforms

Core Responsibilities

Primary Functions

  • Lead the day-to-day operations of the database team, including hiring, mentoring, performance reviews, and career development for DBAs and database engineers, ensuring consistent high-quality delivery across all database platforms (SQL Server, Oracle, MySQL, PostgreSQL, and cloud-native databases).
  • Design and execute capacity planning and growth strategies to scale database infrastructure proactively for forecasted business demand, ensuring predictable performance and cost-efficiency.
  • Define, implement, and enforce database architecture standards, configuration baselines, and best practices for schema design, indexing strategies, normalization/denormalization patterns, and data partitioning to maximize performance and maintainability.
  • Own database performance management: monitor query performance, identify bottlenecks, apply query-level and server-level tuning, and drive index and schema changes that reduce latency and resource consumption.
  • Develop and maintain robust backup and recovery strategies (point-in-time recovery, backups verification, retention policies) and operational runbooks to meet RTO/RPO targets across transactional and analytical databases.
  • Architect and manage high-availability (HA) and disaster recovery (DR) solutions (clustering, replication, failover groups, Always On, DataGuard, streaming replication) and regularly test failover and recovery procedures.
  • Plan and lead database cloud migrations and hybrid deployments using AWS RDS/Aurora, Azure SQL, Google Cloud SQL/Spanner, or containerized database services, including cost estimates, migration runbooks, data validation, and rollback plans.
  • Implement and maintain database security controls: authentication/authorization, encryption at rest and in transit, role-based access control, secrets management, auditing, and vulnerability remediation to meet internal and regulatory compliance (HIPAA, GDPR, SOC2).
  • Establish and operate monitoring and observability for databases using tools like Prometheus, Grafana, New Relic, DataDog, SQL Server DMVs, or AWR/ASH, create actionable alerts, and build dashboards that drive SLAs.
  • Lead database change management processes: coordinate schema changes, index deployments, and structural refactors with engineering teams; validate migrations in staging; and manage production change windows.
  • Build automation for repetitive DBA tasks using infrastructure-as-code (Terraform, CloudFormation), configuration management (Ansible, Chef), and scripting (Python, Bash, PowerShell) to reduce manual toil and increase repeatability.
  • Manage and optimize backup storage, retention, and archive policies and integrate them into organizational data lifecycle management and cost control initiatives.
  • Oversee replication and data integration pipelines (CDC, ETL/ELT) to ensure data integrity and synchronization between OLTP and analytical systems, working closely with data engineering and BI teams.
  • Conduct technical and financial vendor evaluations of commercial database products, managed services, and third-party tools; negotiate contracts and service-level agreements (SLAs) for licensing, support, and cloud services.
  • Maintain inventory and lifecycle management for database software and hardware components, coordinate upgrades and patching schedules, and validate compatibility with dependent applications.
  • Create and maintain comprehensive documentation, runbooks, and incident postmortems for database incidents, continuous improvement actions, and knowledge transfer across teams.
  • Establish key performance indicators (KPIs) and operational metrics for database availability, latency, backup success rate, and mean time to recovery (MTTR), and report these metrics to engineering leadership and business stakeholders.
  • Lead incident response and root cause analysis for database outages or data corruption events, coordinate cross-functional response, and implement permanent fixes and preventative automation.
  • Drive cost optimization initiatives across cloud database footprints and managed services, including right-sizing instances, storage lifecycle policies, and reserved instance/commitment strategies.
  • Ensure data governance alignment for database platforms by collaborating with data governance and compliance teams to support data classification, lineage, retention, and access review processes.
  • Support database-related procurement and budgeting: forecast costs, approve purchases, and manage vendor support escalations to ensure continuity and cost predictability.
  • Implement and promote DevOps practices within database teams including CI/CD pipelines for schema and database code deployments, automated testing for DB migrations, and version control of database artifacts.
  • Evaluate and introduce new database technologies and patterns (NoSQL, search indexes, in-memory caches) where they accelerate product goals, reduce costs, or improve scalability.

Secondary Functions

  • Support ad-hoc data requests and exploratory data analysis.
  • Contribute to the organization's data strategy and roadmap.
  • Collaborate with business units to translate data needs into engineering requirements.
  • Participate in sprint planning and agile ceremonies within the data engineering team.
  • Provide training and best-practice workshops to application teams on efficient query design and proper use of database features.
  • Assist product and analytics teams with schema design for new features to ensure scalability and operational simplicity.
  • Participate in security and compliance audits by providing architecture diagrams, access logs, and change histories for database systems.
  • Evaluate and pilot database automation tools and managed services to improve operational maturity and reduce time-to-delivery.

Required Skills & Competencies

Hard Skills (Technical)

  • Database Administration (DBA) for relational systems: strong, demonstrable experience with SQL Server (T-SQL), Oracle (PL/SQL), PostgreSQL, and/or MySQL—installation, configuration, upgrades, patching, and troubleshooting.
  • Performance Tuning and Query Optimization: using execution plans, indexing strategies, optimizer hints, and profiling tools to reduce query latency and resource utilization.
  • Backup & Recovery and Disaster Recovery Planning: design and validate backup strategies, perform restores, and maintain RPO/RTO targets.
  • High Availability and Replication Technologies: Always On Availability Groups, Oracle Data Guard, streaming replication, logical replication, and multi-region replication topologies.
  • Cloud Database Services: hands-on experience with AWS RDS/Aurora, Azure SQL Database/Managed Instance, Google Cloud SQL/Spanner, and hybrid cloud deployments.
  • NoSQL and NewSQL familiarity: experience with MongoDB, Cassandra, Redis, or DynamoDB where applicable, including data modeling and operational considerations.
  • Scripting & Automation: Python, PowerShell, Bash for operational automation, ETL tasks, and maintenance scripts.
  • Infrastructure-as-Code and CI/CD for Databases: Terraform, CloudFormation, Liquibase/Flyway, and database change pipelines integrated with Git.
  • Monitoring, Observability, and Alerting: proficiency with Prometheus/Grafana, DataDog, New Relic, SQL Server DMVs, AWR/ASH, or similar monitoring stacks.
  • Security & Compliance for Databases: encryption (TDE), IAM integration, key management, audit logging, vulnerability scanning, and experience supporting GDPR/HIPAA/SOC2 audits.
  • Data Modeling and Schema Design: normalization/denormalization tradeoffs, normalization, star/snowflake schema design for analytical workloads.
  • Capacity Planning & Cost Management: experience forecasting growth, right-sizing instances, and implementing cost optimizations for cloud and on-prem databases.
  • Backup storage and archival technologies: S3/Blob lifecycle policies, tape/long-term archive strategies, and cross-region backups.
  • Troubleshooting & Debugging: deep diagnostic skills to resolve deadlocks, blocking, long-running queries, and infrastructure-related database issues.
  • Vendor and License Management: experience evaluating DB vendors, managing licenses, and negotiating support agreements.

Soft Skills

  • Leadership and People Management: experience leading and growing technical teams, conducting reviews, and mentoring DBAs and engineers.
  • Excellent Communication: ability to explain complex database topics to technical and non-technical stakeholders and write clear runbooks and incident reports.
  • Stakeholder Management: skilled at prioritizing roadmap items and managing expectations across product, engineering, compliance, and business units.
  • Problem-Solving and Analytical Thinking: diagnose systemic issues, prioritize remediation, and propose pragmatic, durable solutions.
  • Project Management: ability to plan, scope, and execute migrations, upgrades, and major database projects on time and on budget.
  • Collaboration and Cross-Functional Influence: work effectively with DevOps, Data Engineering, Security, and Product teams.
  • Attention to Detail and Documentation Discipline: produce accurate architecture diagrams, SOPs, and audit artifacts.
  • Resilience and Incident Leadership: remain calm during outages, lead war rooms, and direct post-incident corrective actions.
  • Continuous Improvement Mindset: prioritize automation, repeatability, and operational excellence to reduce manual effort.
  • Business Acumen: understand how database performance and availability impact revenue, customer experience, and product SLAs.

Education & Experience

Educational Background

Minimum Education:

  • Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Information Systems, Software Engineering, or a related technical field OR equivalent practical experience in database administration and infrastructure.

Preferred Education:

  • Master's degree in Computer Science, Data Science, or MBA with technical concentration is a plus.
  • Relevant certifications such as Microsoft Certified: Azure Database Administrator Associate, Oracle Certified Professional (OCP), AWS Certified Database - Specialty, or Certified Data Management Professional (CDMP).

Relevant Fields of Study:

  • Computer Science
  • Information Systems
  • Software Engineering
  • Data Science
  • Information Security

Experience Requirements

Typical Experience Range:

  • 5–12+ years of progressive experience in database administration, database engineering, or data platform roles; including 2–5 years in people leadership or technical lead roles.

Preferred:

  • Proven experience managing teams of DBAs/engineers and operating production database environments at scale.
  • Hands-on experience with both on-prem and cloud database technologies, database migrations, HA/DR architectures, and implementing security/compliance controls.
  • Track record of implementing automation and CI/CD for database deployments, and reducing MTTR through improved observability and runbooks.
  • Experience supporting regulated industries (healthcare, finance, e-commerce) or complex multi-region deployments is highly desirable.
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