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Key Responsibilities and Required Skills for Cloud Database Administrator

💰 $95,000 - $170,000

CloudDatabaseDevOpsSREData

🎯 Role Definition

The Cloud Database Administrator (Cloud DBA) is responsible for designing, deploying, operating and optimizing relational and NoSQL databases in public cloud environments to meet availability, performance, security and cost objectives. This role blends traditional database administration with cloud-native practices—managing DBaaS offerings (AWS RDS/Aurora, Azure SQL Managed Instance, Google Cloud SQL/Spanner), automating provisioning and lifecycle tasks with Infrastructure-as-Code (Terraform/CloudFormation), implementing high-availability and disaster recovery architectures, tuning query and storage performance, and partnering closely with developers, SREs and security teams to deliver reliable, scalable data platforms.

📈 Career Progression

Typical Career Path

Entry Point From:

  • On-premises Database Administrator (Oracle, SQL Server, PostgreSQL, MySQL)
  • Cloud Engineer / Cloud Platform Engineer
  • DevOps or Site Reliability Engineer with database experience

Advancement To:

  • Senior Cloud Database Administrator / Lead DBA
  • Database Architect / Data Platform Architect
  • Cloud Infrastructure Manager or Head of Data Platform
  • Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) Lead focused on data services

Lateral Moves:

  • Data Engineer
  • DevOps Engineer / Platform Engineer
  • Security Engineer (cloud security, DB hardening)
  • Application Performance Engineer

Core Responsibilities

Primary Functions

  • Design, deploy and operate production-grade managed and self-managed database services in public cloud providers (AWS RDS/Aurora, Amazon Redshift, Azure SQL Managed Instance, Azure Database for PostgreSQL/MySQL, Google Cloud SQL/Spanner, Google Bigtable) ensuring high availability, automated failover, cross-region replication and documented Recovery Time Objective (RTO) and Recovery Point Objective (RPO).
  • Lead database migration projects from on-premises or legacy systems to cloud-native managed services and IaaS-based databases, including assessment, schema conversion, data migration planning, cutover orchestration, testing and rollback strategies using tools such as AWS DMS, Azure Database Migration Service, pg_dump/pg_restore, and third-party solutions.
  • Implement and maintain backup, snapshot, and point-in-time recovery strategies, regularly validate backups with restoration drills, automate backup lifecycle management and integrate backups with retention, encryption and compliance policies (HIPAA, PCI, SOC2).
  • Proactively monitor database health, query performance and resource utilization using CloudWatch, Azure Monitor, GCP Monitoring, Datadog, Prometheus/Grafana and database-native metrics; create meaningful alerts, dashboards and runbooks for first-response and escalation procedures.
  • Perform advanced performance tuning and optimization across the stack—indexing strategies, query plan analysis, configuration tuning (innodb, shared_buffers, work_mem), storage and I/O optimization, partitioning, connection pooling and caching patterns to meet SLAs for latency and throughput.
  • Architect and operate multi-AZ and multi-region replication topologies (replication groups, read replicas, logical/physical replication, CDC) for scaling read workloads, geographic redundancy and near-zero downtime migrations.
  • Build and maintain automation pipelines for database provisioning, patching, schema migrations and configuration drift remediation using Infrastructure as Code (Terraform, CloudFormation, ARM templates), configuration management (Ansible, Chef), and CI/CD tools (Jenkins, GitLab CI, GitHub Actions).
  • Manage database security posture: enforce least privilege access with IAM integration (AWS IAM, Azure AD), manage credentials and secrets via AWS Secrets Manager or HashiCorp Vault, implement encryption at rest and in transit (KMS, TLS), and perform vulnerability scanning and remediation.
  • Define and enforce database change management, version control for schema changes (Flyway, Liquibase), code reviews for stored procedures and migrations, and maintain audit trails to satisfy compliance and security requirements.
  • Troubleshoot complex incidents and production outages involving slow queries, deadlocks, connection storms, storage saturation and replication lag; conduct post-incident analysis, root cause analysis (RCA) and implement preventative controls.
  • Lead capacity planning and cost optimization for databases in the cloud—right-sizing instances, storage tiering, reserved instances/savings plans, monitoring IOPS and throughput, and recommending architectural changes such as read replicas, sharding or caching to reduce cost and improve performance.
  • Maintain database lifecycle processes: regular patching and version upgrades, rolling upgrades with minimal downtime, deprecation of legacy engines, and migration plans for end-of-life database versions.
  • Deploy and operate containerized database patterns when appropriate (Kubernetes Operators for PostgreSQL/MySQL/MongoDB) and integrate stateful workloads with persistent volumes, storage classes and backup strategies for container orchestration.
  • Collaborate with application teams on data modeling, SQL optimization, connection pooling strategies, transaction isolation levels, and schema design to improve application performance and reduce costly database patterns.
  • Create and maintain comprehensive runbooks, operational playbooks, run-rate operational dashboards, and SLI/SLO documentation for database services to support on-call rotations and clear handover between teams.
  • Configure and tune advanced database features such as partitioning, materialized views, full-text search, JSON/JSONB indexing, foreign data wrappers and advanced replication tools to match application workloads.
  • Integrate databases with observability and logging systems (ELK/EFK stacks) to capture slow queries, errors and audit logs; use query profiling tools (pg_stat_statements, EXPLAIN ANALYZE, perf, iostat) to validate optimizations.
  • Provide technical leadership for database-related projects, mentor junior DBAs, coordinate vendor support escalations (Oracle, Microsoft, MongoDB) and represent the database platform team in architecture reviews.
  • Implement and test disaster recovery plans including failover simulations, cross-region restores, and runbooks for catastrophic scenarios, and ensure DR readiness through periodic drills and documentation updates.
  • Maintain licensing, procurement and vendor relationships for proprietary database technologies (Oracle, SQL Server), ensuring legal compliance and cost-effective licensing strategies.
  • Enforce and audit data governance policies at the database layer—data retention, masking, encryption, GDPR/HIPAA compliance controls, and support security and privacy audits.
  • Provide on-call support for assigned database services, respond to priority incidents 24/7 where required, and ensure timely communication with stakeholders during outages.

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.
  • Create training materials and lead knowledge transfer sessions for developers and operations staff on best practices for database usage in the cloud.
  • Evaluate and pilot new database technologies and managed services (serverless databases, NewSQL) to drive cost, performance and development velocity improvements.

Required Skills & Competencies

Hard Skills (Technical)

  • Proficient with cloud database services: AWS RDS/Aurora, Amazon Redshift, Azure SQL/Managed Instance, Azure Database for PostgreSQL/MySQL, Google Cloud SQL/Spanner.
  • Deep expertise in relational databases: PostgreSQL, MySQL/MariaDB, Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle (installation, configuration, tuning, replication).
  • Practical experience with NoSQL and distributed databases: MongoDB, Cassandra, DynamoDB, Redis.
  • Experience implementing and automating backup, restore and disaster recovery strategies including PITR, snapshots and cross-region replication.
  • Strong performance tuning and query optimization skills: EXPLAIN ANALYZE, index strategy, optimizer hints, partitioning, and connection pooling (pgBouncer).
  • Infrastructure as Code and automation: Terraform, CloudFormation, ARM templates, Ansible, and CI/CD integrations for database provisioning and schema migrations.
  • Familiarity with container orchestration and database operators (Kubernetes, StatefulSets, Helm, Crunchy/Postgres Operator).
  • Monitoring and observability: Datadog, Prometheus/Grafana, New Relic, CloudWatch, Azure Monitor and query-level instrumentation.
  • Scripting and automation: Python, Bash, SQL, and experience building tooling for operational tasks and migrations.
  • Security and compliance: IAM integration, encryption (KMS), secrets management (Vault, Secrets Manager), auditing and hardening for GDPR/HIPAA/PCI.
  • Data migration tools and methodologies: AWS DMS, Azure Database Migration Service, pg_dump/pg_restore, logical replication and CDC frameworks.
  • Experience with high availability architectures, replication topologies, multi-AZ and multi-region deployments.
  • Capacity planning and cost optimization: instance sizing, storage optimization, reserved instances/savings plans, and workload-driven scaling strategies.
  • Familiarity with database change management and schema version control tools: Flyway, Liquibase.
  • Solid Linux systems administration knowledge, networking fundamentals and storage subsystem understanding (EBS, NVMe, NFS, iSCSI).

Soft Skills

  • Strong communication skills: translate complex technical issues into actionable plans for engineering and non-technical stakeholders.
  • Collaboration: work cross-functionally with developers, SREs, security, product and QA teams.
  • Problem-solving mindset: systematic troubleshooting and root cause analysis under pressure.
  • Ownership and accountability: drive incidents to resolution and follow through with remediation.
  • Mentoring and leadership: train junior team members and lead technical design discussions.
  • Time management and prioritization: balance operational support with project delivery and technical debt reduction.
  • Documentation-focused: produce clear runbooks, DR plans, architecture diagrams and postmortems.
  • Customer orientation: align database decisions with business SLA expectations and developer productivity.
  • Adaptability: comfortable learning new cloud services, database engines and automation frameworks.
  • Analytical thinking and attention to detail when analyzing performance metrics, logs and query plans.

Education & Experience

Educational Background

Minimum Education:

  • Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, Software Engineering, or a related technical discipline — or equivalent professional experience.

Preferred Education:

  • Master’s degree in Computer Science, Data Management, or Cloud Computing or relevant professional certifications.
  • Relevant certifications: AWS Certified Database – Specialty, AWS Certified Solutions Architect, Microsoft Azure Database Administrator Associate, Google Professional Data Engineer, Oracle Certified Professional.

Relevant Fields of Study:

  • Computer Science
  • Information Systems
  • Software Engineering
  • Data Engineering / Data Science
  • Cybersecurity (for secure database operations)

Experience Requirements

Typical Experience Range: 3–8 years of database administration experience with at least 2 years operating databases in public cloud environments.

Preferred: 5+ years of DBA experience with demonstrated cloud migration projects, production-grade cloud DB operations, proven performance tuning history and experience automating database lifecycle with IaC and CI/CD pipelines.

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