Database Administrator at Crown Interactive

Job Objective

• We're looking for an experienced and detail-oriented Database Administrator (DBA) to join our growing technology team.
• Are you passionate about ensuring the availability, performance, security, and reliability of critical databases? Do you enjoy solving complex database challenges, optimising system performance, and ensuring that business-critical data is secure, accurate, and always available? Do you thrive in a fast-paced technology environment where you work closely with Engineering, DevOps, Product, and Business teams?

If so, we have the perfect opportunity for you!

• As the Database Administrator, you will be responsible for the administration, performance, security, availability, backup, recovery, and continuous optimisation of databases supporting our 1Gov, SaaS, Enterprise, and Power Sector solutions.
• You will play a critical role in ensuring that our technology platforms have reliable, scalable, and secure database infrastructure capable of supporting high-volume transactions, enterprise applications, government digital services, and power-sector solutions.
• This is an exciting opportunity for a technically strong and proactive professional who is passionate about database performance, data security, system reliability, troubleshooting, automation, and continuous improvement.

Key Roles and Responsibilities:

Database Administration & Operations

• Install, configure, upgrade, patch, and maintain database management systems.
• Administer production, staging, testing, and development databases.
• Create and manage databases, schemas, tables, indexes, views, stored procedures, functions, and database objects.
• Manage database users, roles, permissions, and access controls.
• Monitor database availability, capacity, health, and performance.
• Ensure databases remain available and reliable for business-critical applications.
• Perform routine database maintenance, housekeeping, and optimisation.
• Manage database configurations in line with approved architecture and operational standards.

Database Performance & Optimisation

• Monitor and analyse database performance.
• Identify slow queries, locking issues, deadlocks, bottlenecks, and inefficient database operations.
• Perform query optimisation and indexing.
• Review database execution plans and recommend performance improvements.
• Establish database performance baselines and monitoring thresholds.
• Work with developers to improve SQL queries and database design.
• Support performance tuning for high-volume applications and transaction-intensive systems.

Backup, Recovery & Business Continuity

• Develop and maintain database backup and recovery procedures.
• Schedule and monitor automated database backups.
• Regularly test backup restoration processes.
• Ensure compliance with approved Recovery Point Objective (RPO) and Recovery Time Objective (RTO).
• Support disaster recovery planning and implementation.
• Maintain database replication and high-availability configurations where required.
• Participate in disaster recovery and business continuity exercises.
• Ensure critical databases can be restored within agreed service levels.

Database Security

• Implement database security controls and access management.
• Manage privileged database accounts and permissions.
• Ensure users have appropriate least-privilege access.
• Monitor and investigate unauthorised database access.
• Support database encryption at rest and in transit.
• Implement appropriate database auditing and logging.
• Participate in vulnerability assessments, penetration testing, and remediation activities.
• Ensure database practices align with Crown Interactive's information security, privacy, and compliance requirements.
• Support compliance with applicable data protection and regulatory requirements, including Nigeria's data protection requirements where applicable.

Database Architecture & Development Support

• Collaborate with Solution Architects and Software Engineers on database architecture.
• Review database designs for scalability, performance, security, and maintainability.
• Support the design of relational and, where applicable, NoSQL database solutions.
• Provide database expertise during application development and implementation.
• Review database scripts and migration processes.
• Support schema changes and database version control.
• Ensure database changes follow approved Change Management procedures.
• Participate in technical design reviews and architecture discussions.

Production Support

• Provide Level 2/Level 3 database support for production applications.
• Respond to database incidents and service disruptions.
• Investigate database-related application failures.
• Participate in incident management and root-cause analysis.
• Maintain database incident and problem-management records.
• Provide timely escalation of critical database issues.
• Participate in scheduled maintenance and release activities.
• Support after-hours or on-call activities where required for critical production systems.

Monitoring & Capacity Management

• Implement and maintain database monitoring tools.
• Monitor CPU, memory, storage, connections, transactions, replication, query performance, and database health.

Conduct database capacity planning.

• Forecast storage and resource requirements based on business growth.
• Identify potential capacity constraints before they affect production.
• Maintain dashboards and reports for database availability and performance.
• Establish alerts for critical database conditions.

Data Integrity & Quality

• Maintain database integrity, consistency, and reliability.
• Implement appropriate constraints, validation, and data-control mechanisms.
• Investigate data inconsistencies and integrity issues.
• Support data cleansing and migration activities.
• Ensure database changes do not compromise existing application data.
• Collaborate with application teams to resolve data-related issues.

Documentation & Governance

• Maintain accurate database architecture and configuration documentation.
• Document backup, recovery, replication, security, and maintenance procedures.
• Maintain database inventory and ownership records.
• Document production database changes.
• Maintain standard operating procedures and runbooks.
• Contribute to technology policies, standards, and database governance frameworks.

Required Skills & Competencies

Relational Databases

• PostgreSQL
• Microsoft SQL Server
• MySQL / MariaDB
• Oracle Database

Database Technologies

• SQL
• Database replication
• High availability
• Database clustering
• Partitioning
• Indexing
• Query optimisation
• Stored procedures
• Database migrations
• Backup and recovery

Cloud & Infrastructure

• AWS, Microsoft Azure, or Google Cloud
• Linux and Windows Server environments
• Docker and containerised environments
• Kubernetes is an advantage
• Cloud-managed database services

DevOps & Monitoring

• Git / version control
• CI/CD pipelines
• Infrastructure monitoring
• Database monitoring and alerting
• Logging and observability tools

Security

• Database access control
• Encryption
• Auditing and logging
• Vulnerability remediation
• Privileged access management

Experience and Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Computer Engineering, Software Engineering, or a related field.
• 7–8 years' relevant experience in database administration or database engineering.
• Relevant professional certifications in database administration, cloud computing, or information technology are an advantage.
• Relevant experience as a Database Administrator, Database Engineer, or similar role. 
• Experience managing production databases in a technology, SaaS, enterprise, government, telecommunications, financial services, utilities, or similarly complex environment.
• Experience supporting high-availability and business-critical systems.
• Experience with database backup, recovery, performance tuning, and security.
• Experience working within Agile and DevOps environments is an advantage.
• Experience with large-scale transaction processing is an advantage.