Principal Database Administrator Fully Remote

£80k-£90k | Fully remote | Permanent, full-time | Platform / Engineering
We're hiring a Principal DBA to lead and hands-on-run a 300+ production database estate—predominantly SQL Server on Azure, with a growing Cosmos DB footprint—supporting a market-leading SaaS platform 24x7.
This is a true player-coach role: you'll set the long-term database strategy and standards, improve reliability, performance, and security across the estate, and line-manage and develop our existing DBA team. You'll be the senior technical authority for database architecture, risk, and operations.
What you'll do

  • Own the strategy, standards, and roadmap for the database function across SQL Server, Azure SQL, and Cosmos DB.
  • Get hands-on with a live production estate: performance tuning, configuration, backups, restores, disaster recovery, incident response, and release support.
  • Right-size and optimise Azure SQL deployments across General Purpose, Business Critical, and Hyperscale—balancing performance, availability, and cost.
  • Replace manual, undocumented changes with repeatable, auditable, well-monitored processes.
  • Lead, mentor, and grow a small DBA team.
  • Shape our emerging data platform direction, including Cosmos DB, Snowflake, and Azure Data Factory.
What we're looking for
  • 8+ years' hands-on SQL Server DBA experience, including deep performance tuning, indexing, execution plans, and troubleshooting at scale.
  • Strong Azure SQL experience, including deployment-tier selection and migration.
  • Proven experience defining standards and long-term direction for a DBA function—not just running day-to-day operations.
  • Experience owning backup, restore, and DR for business-critical, 24x7 systems.
  • T-SQL and PowerShell automation; Redgate SQL Compare/SQL Toolbelt or equivalent.
  • Ideally, line-management experience and exposure to NoSQL (Cosmos DB or MongoDB), data warehousing, and ETL.
Why join
You'll have real ownership of a critical database estate and the mandate to build it into a well-governed, scalable, future-proof function—while staying close to the technology and making a visible impact every day.
Location: Fully remote Salary: £80,000-£90,000 Reports to: Director of Engineering and Platform Operations Team: 1-2 Database Administrators

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