Description
Summary
AQA rely heavily on Microsoft databases to provide backend services for their in-house developed applications, to support the exam marking process. These applications are architected with a variety of Microsoft solutions, from traditional clustered SQL to Azure platform services. In addition, SQL is database of choice for business operation applications.Purpose: Provide full database support across the Microsoft estate, for both Production and Corporate services, on-premise and in the cloud.
Activities:
Consultancy & Design and Training
Identify customer requirements for database architecture - face to face and on-site where required.
Produce proposals and solution options that are performant, secure, fit for purpose and aligned with the company IT strategies.
Provide advice and recommendations as database technology expert.
Develop, produce and deliver training on operating and managing AQA application database systems to partners.
Proactively collaborate with architecture and application development teams, at all appropriate levels of the SDLC, to ensure the database environment meets current and future business objectives.
Provide advice to customers where required, advising on database architecture for future systems development.
Installation and Commissioning
Build physical/virtual/cloud based database solutions to meet defined and agreed customer requirements,
Define, produce and maintain supporting documentation for system implementations.
Install and commission applications.
Support required testing processes to ensure the applications are meeting required metrics and SLAs.
Application Development
Work with development teams to support development of new releases.
Provide fixes for logged defects prioritised by Product/Project Manager.
Support development of new features by driving the design and development of database elements to meet requirements.
Technical Operational Support
Identify future requirements from the business regarding future application usage and produce a capacity plan showing impact on operation systems, identifying activities required to support capacity changes
Implement proactive maintenance plans to ensure the application is optimal, based on industry best practice, testing outcomes and live monitoring.
Implement system monitoring and alerting for the application estate that ensures application health state is monitored and defined user groups receive appropriate alerting in the event of failure or degradation of service.
Provide incident support as required, ensuring workloads are prioritised appropriately and in line with operational requirements.
Proactively analyse the performance of the application databases within the estate identifying key performance indicators that can be measured and reported on a regular basis.
Identify proactive maintenance work such as SQL server patching and schedule testing and roll out to ensure systems are operating with minimal risks.
Provide out of hours support on a rota basis for identified peak periods.
Maintain supportability and uphold security controls
Maintain the supportability of the databases and perform version update as and when required. Apply security controls on databases as required and adhere to organization security standards.
Process improvement
Identify areas of process improvement for Platform Services and Support Team to identify efficiency, accuracy and cost savings improvements as well as ensuring standard repeatable processes can be followed.
Agree and prioritise implementation of process improvements with line manager and the team.
Ensure all documentation is accurate and maintained to reflect the estate, as well as identify opportunities for improvement.
Creation of new services
Identify opportunities to deliver new services to customers (e.g. data analysis and reporting services).
Agree and prioritise the development of new services that can be offered by Platform Services and Support Team.
Need to know (to be successful in this role, you will need to know):
Design and right-size a database solution based on performance test strategies and capacity requirements
Tune and monitor a database based on specific metrics and requirements
Implement data security
Carry out data modelling and design
AQA_IMPLEMENT_Back-up, recovery and HA database architecture to meet recovery requirements
Ensure data integrity
Data extraction, transformation and loading (ETL)
Develop and maintain automation scripts using PowerShell, Azure CLI, or other scripting tools to streamline routine DBA tasks.
AQA_IMPLEMENT_Automation for deployment as per DevOps requirements
Extensive knowledge of the options for hosting SQL databases in Azure, along with the appropriate use of each
How to migrate SQL databases from on-premise to Azure
How to troubleshoot performance issues occurring within Azure SQL databases
How to optimise associated hosting costs