Database Engineer

Data Engineer / Database Engineer (DBA) – RDBMS & NoSQL Platforms 24 Months Location: London or Burgess Hill Hybrid - Candidate is expected to work a minimum of 3 days a week in the office co-located with the rest of the team. These days may vary depending on project Role Overview We are seeking an experienced Data Engineer / Database Engineer (DBA) to join a large-scale financial services technology and data transformation programme. The successful candidate will be responsible for the engineering, configuration, deployment, administration and operational support of enterprise database platforms across both traditional relational database technologies and modern distributed NoSQL environments. This is a hands-on engineering role requiring strong practical experience with relational database platforms such as Oracle and PostgreSQL, together with NoSQL technologies including MongoDB, Cassandra and Couchbase. Also cloud equivalents of these technologies. Candidate must be keen to pick up new technology and learning as required. The role will cover the full database lifecycle, including provisioning, configuration, DDL deployment, performance optimization, monitoring and database support. A key objective of the role will be to improve the consistency, reliability and automation of database deployments. The successful candidate will therefore be expected to develop repeatable engineering patterns and automate database activities wherever possible. This is not a traditional Database Administrator (DBA) role. This role is to work closely with Applications Teams and Data Architects to define and deploy new initiatives to production on whatever database platform is being used. Production Support, patching and backups are supported outside of this area. The ideal candidate combines strong database engineering and operational experience with an automation-first mindset and has experience supporting highly available, business-critical systems within financial services, banking or similarly regulated enterprise environments. Key Responsibilities Configure, deploy, administer and support enterprise relational and NoSQL database platforms.Provide engineering and operational support across:OraclePostgreSQLMongoDBCassandraCouchbaseBuild, configure and maintain database environments across development, test, staging and production.Develop automated and repeatable approaches for database provisioning, configuration, deployment and lifecycle management.Implement database configuration and infrastructure through code wherever practical, reducing manual administration and configuration drift.Support database deployments through CI/CD pipelines and automated release processes.Perform database installation, upgrades, patching and version management.Manage database schemas, users, roles, permissions and access controls.Support database security, vulnerability remediation, encryption and compliance requirements.Monitor database availability, capacity, performance and operational health.Investigate and resolve database performance issues, including:Query performanceIndexingExecution plansLocking and contentionConnection managementStorage and capacityReplication performanceDesign and maintain appropriate database monitoring, alerting and observability.Support high availability, resilience and disaster recovery capabilities.Configure and test backup, restore and recovery processes.Support replication, clustering and distributed database configurations.Participate in production incident management, root-cause analysis and problem management.Troubleshoot complex database, application and infrastructure issues in collaboration with engineering and application teams.Support application development teams with database connectivity, schema deployment, query optimisation and database-related technical issues.Work with Data Architects and application architects to ensure database implementations align with agreed data models and architectural standards.Support database migrations, platform upgrades and technology modernisation initiatives.Develop and maintain database engineering standards, operational procedures, runbooks and technical documentation.Identify opportunities to simplify and standardise the database estate through common engineering patterns, tooling and automation.Contribute to capacity planning, technology lifecycle management and database platform roadmaps. Required Skills & Experience Technical Skills Strong hands-on database engineering and DBA experience in large-scale enterprise environments.Strong production experience with relational database technologies, particularly:OraclePostgreSQLHands-on experience with one or more enterprise NoSQL technologies, preferably:CassandraMongoDBCouchbaseStrong understanding of relational database concepts including:Schema managementIndexingQuery optimisationExecution plansTransactionsLocking and concurrencyPartitioningReplicationConnection managementStrong understanding of distributed and NoSQL database concepts including:ClusteringReplicationPartitioning and shardingConsistency modelsData distributionNode failure and recoveryCapacity and performance managementExperience installing, configuring, upgrading and patching database platforms.Strong experience with database performance monitoring, troubleshooting and tuning.Experience implementing high availability and disaster recovery solutions.Strong understanding of backup, restore and point-in-time recovery strategies.Experience with database security including:Authentication and authorisationRole-based access controlEncryptionCertificate managementSecrets managementVulnerability remediationSecurity patchingExperience with database monitoring, alerting and observability platforms. Automation & DevOps Strong automation and scripting skills. Experience automating database provisioning, configuration and operational activities using technologies such as: Ansible Terraform Python Shell scripting Experience with Infrastructure as Code and configuration management practices. Experience integrating database deployments and configuration changes into CI/CD pipelines. Familiarity with source control and software engineering practices using Git. Ability to create reusable automation for common DBA activities rather than relying on manual operational processes. Experience with automated database/schema deployment tooling is advantageous. Experience working with containerised or Kubernetes-based database environments is advantageous. Familiarity with cloud and hybrid database platforms is advantageous. Database Platform Experience Relational Strong hands-on experience with: PostgreSQL Oracle Experience should ideally include installation, configuration, administration, performance tuning, patching, backup/recovery, replication and production troubleshooting. NoSQL / Distributed Databases Hands-on experience with one or more of: Apache Cassandra MongoDB Couchbase Candidates should understand the operational characteristics of distributed databases, including clustering, replication, partitioning, consistency, node management, capacity planning and failure recovery. Experience supporting large Cassandra clusters or other distributed database platforms would be particularly advantageous. Operational & Production Support Experience Experience supporting highly available, business-critical production database environments.Strong troubleshooting and diagnostic capabilities.Experience working within incident, problem and change management processes.Ability to participate in major incident resolution and root-cause analysis.Experience planning and executing production database changes with appropriate risk assessment and rollback procedures.Understanding of service availability, resilience, recovery objectives and operational risk.Ability to identify recurring operational issues and engineer permanent solutions rather than relying on repeated manual intervention.Experience working within controlled change and release management environments.Willingness to participate in an on-call or production support rota where required.Functional / Domain ExperienceExperience working within one or more of the following is preferred:Financial servicesCapital marketsInvestment bankingPaymentsTrading platformsRisk or regulatory environmentsExperience supporting database platforms underpinning high-volume transactional or business-critical systems is highly desirable.A good understanding of the operational, security and regulatory requirements associated with financial technology environments would be advantageous. Communication & Soft Skills Excellent English communication skills, both written and verbal.Strong analytical and problem-solving capabilities.Ability to diagnose complex technical problems across database, application and infrastructure layers.Ability to communicate technical issues, risks and recommendations clearly to engineering teams, architects and management.Strong documentation skills, including the creation of technical standards, operational procedures and support runbooks.Ability to work independently in a fast-paced enterprise environment.Collaborative approach when working with application developers, infrastructure engineers, architects, security teams and production support teams.