Senior Database Administrator at Pagatech Limited

Sector: Financial Services
Department: Product Development
Reports to: Lead Software Architect

Summary

• Our purpose at Paga is to make it simple for 1 billion people to access and use money. We do that by delivering innovative financial services to the mass market across large, underserved markets.
• At Paga we value above all else, Collaboration, Ownership, Results Orientation, Integrity and Innovation (CORII).
• As a Senior Database Administrator Manager, you will own primary responsibility for the performance, security and reliability administration of the core relational databases on the Paga platform. You will work closely with the software engineering teams (including database engineers) and the platform team (infrastructure and devops). This means:
  • Engaging in strategic database and software design decision making.
  • Work with team to embed development practices to maintain database reliability and performance.
  • Lead database availability and reliability implementations and operations.
  • Develop and maintain database performance monitoring solutions in collaboration with the platform team.
  • Oversee database backup, archiving and replication activities.
  • Delivery of best practice instruction/training to database engineering and software development team to help maintain data reliability, performance and integrity.
  • Manage database software services including installations and updates.
  • General curation of platform databases from a performance and reliability perspective
• The senior database administrator will be a key, senior member of the Product Development Team, which is responsibilities for all aspects of development and management of the Paga product platform. Database administration activities usually span a number of technical areas – application performance, infrastructure and security so database administrators will work closely with all of these teams while reporting directly to the lead software architect (application side) in the Paga development team structure.
• We expect this role to own primary responsibility for the effective operation of the Paga core relational databases which at present exist in both Microsoft SQL Server and PostgreSQL deployments.
• Paga’s Product Development team structure is spread primarily across Lagos Nigeria,  Addis Ababa Ethiopia, and Mexico City Mexico, so this role, based out of London, comes with the expectation of very strong remote collaboration and self-management skills.  You will need to be excellent at utilizing remote communication tools and applying clear communication and collaboration practices to effectively engage with your team mates and other company stakeholders.
• There will be the expectation of occasional travel to some of the Paga office locations for training, team events, user-engagement and general market-empathy development.

Primary Responsibilities

• Database design and software strategy input  - Collaborating with other software architecture functions to advice on database-related design concerns.
• Database performance management - Managing live and other database environments to optimize performance.
• Database reliability management - Leading database reliability practices including configuration, replication, archiving, backup etc. and collaborating with platform team to maintain excellent database performance monitoring solutions.
• Database security administration - Overseeing database security management.
• Database data integrity management – Overseeing database integrity management implementations.
• Database development best practices sharing - Engaging in knowledge sharing to provide best practice instruction/training to database engineering and software development team to help maintain data reliability, performance and integrity.

Knowledge and Skill Requirements

• 10+ working with relevant DBMSs and 4+ years of database administration experience with relevant DMBSs.
• Experience administering MS SQL Server required.
• Experience administering PostgreSQL highly desirable.
• Experience with cloud-based database service platforms.

Key Competencies:

• Strong strategic and critical thinking skills.
• Excellent in team and cross team collaboration skills.
• Good verbal/written communication skills.
• Highly meticulous and attentive to detail.
• Strong multi-tasking and self-management skills.
• Curious, self-driven and empathetic