Purpose
The Database Administrators within the CCOE function area of Unified Support provide a single, global, role of managing the full range of reactive and proactive database driven activities which underpin the provision of support and maintenance activities for all and cloud service activities for commercial IFS customers. They cover all IFS supported database platforms (Oracle, MS/Azure SQL, PostgreSQL, MongoDB, etc.) and all 3 deployment models (cloud service, remote and on-premise.) Additionally, the Database Administrators design, develop and deliver processes, tools and best practices for the database management activities which are performed by Cloud Services, as well as the dedicated, restricted services teams within IFS Unified Support.
Key Duties
A Database Administrator (DBA) in the Database Services Team will design, develop and deliver common processes and automate technical tasks for the Unified Support teams to use in their daily duties, act as an experienced DBA resource to help address issues to ensure the availability, security, latency, performance, efficiency, monitoring of client database systems, act as a final point of escalation for challenging issues with our database services, support Cloud Services and other teams during investigations and corrective actions during problem management investigations.
DBAs in the CCOE Database Services Team at IFS proactively interact and work alongside other resolver groups (R&D, Solutions Architects, Monitoring, Network, platform vendors, etc) as appropriate to resolve issues and requests related to the Cloud platform and also provide guidance and feedback to improve the IFS product set in future releases. The DBAs also provide database advice to IFS remote and on-premise customers where required.
A DBA in the CCOE Database Services Team at IFS is key to ensuring highly available, robust and secure database systems and own the overall design, build, availability, performance and general support of all databases which underpin the applications offered by IFS. The DBAs support existing database engines whilst engaging in the design, deployment & delivery of new database tools and services to further enhance availability, performance and security of our database platforms in order to provide an outstanding experience and reliable database services for all our customers.
Common to DBAs in the CCOE Database Services Team at IFS is their pride in building robust database systems, desire to support & collaborate with other IFS teams, focus on customer experience to respond within SLAs, curiosity to fix root cause problems, thinking with an engineering mindset to constantly drive improved performance and security underpinned by standardization, engineering automation of database tasks to avoid ad-hoc/human error, as well as ambition to deliver new tools and technology to support making the IFS enterprise software services in the Cloud robust and self-supportive.
The responsibilities include:
- Daily DB Operations
- Design common processes for Unified Support teams to use in their day-to-day duties supporting and maintaining our Cloud database services.
- Act as an experienced DBA resource to help perform some of those daily duties when the need arises to address issues with client systems
- Act as a point of escalation for challenging issues with our database services
- Work as needed to support Unified Support teams during investigations and corrective actions during problem management investigations.
- Work with R&D alongside the CSA to provide guidance and feedback to improve the IFS product set in future releases.
- Backup Solutions
- Design and implement, in conjunction with Unified Support teams, agreed backup solutions for the IFS Application suite to satisfy our own and our customers’ needs
- Performance Tuning
- Design processes and approaches for the Unified Support teams to manage performance issues in our cloud environments
- Work with the CSA and R&D teams to address performance issues through both short term and long-term methods
- Disaster Recovery
- Design, implement and test regularly, in conjunction with the CSA, RnD and Unified Support teams, any agreed disaster recovery solutions and ensure the solution suits the needs of IFS and our customers
- Monitoring
- Implement appropriate tooling to monitor and manage database availability within our cloud services.
- Design processes and approaches for the Unified Support teams to manage availability issues in production environments.
- Automation and Tooling
- Work with the Unified Support, CSA and Automation teams to design automation to reduce time and overhead for common tasks wherever possible.
- Training and skills transfer
- Deliver DBA knowledge transfer/training sessions to selected internal teams.
Technical Skills
- Experience implementing and managing critical production systems, especially in the cloud, including a strong awareness of customer-driven priorities and commercial pressures is essential.
- Experience supporting multi-tenant Oracle databases (CDB/PDB)
- Experience administering Oracle databases (minimum 19c) on Linux based systems
- Strong technical experience with Oracle RAC / ASM.
- Strong technical experience supporting Oracle Exadata systems (EXACC)
- Strong technical experience designing, implementing and supporting GoldenGate CDC solutions.
- Strong technical experience with performance tuning - AWR/ASH/ADDM/TKPROF/tracing sessions, etc – in a multi-tier architecture
- Good technical experience using OEM for various database administration purposes.
- Strong technical experience with backup/restore – RMAN, data pump export/import.
- Strong technical experience with disaster recovery; dataguard – setup and troubleshooting.
- Experience with database cloning – RMAN active duplicate
- Strong technical experience writing linux shell scripts: bash (knowledge of powershell scripting and windows command also nice to have)
- Technical experience with database upgrades (12c to 19c and above) and patching
- Knowledge of database encryption – row level, backups, etc
- Exposure to 3rd party monitoring systems, e.g. Nagios, Prometheus, ELK
- Exposure to Java driven Cloud/SaaS systems including the following technologies is essential: Oracle WebLogic middleware, Oracle/Apache HTTP Servers, etc.
- Experience working with ticketing systems, such as Service Now, JIRA, etc
- Experience working within a strict change management framework.
- Exposure to DevOps CI/CD tools – GitHub, GitLab, BitBucket, etc.
- Knowledge of Container technology – Kubernetes (AKS)
- Hands-on understanding of Cloud Technologies – Azure, AWS or GCP
Essential:
Knowledge and hands-on ability to support at least one other database system: AzureSQL DB, MS SQL Server, PostgreSQL, MongoDB.
The following skills and exposure are not essential but are very useful:
- Microsoft Azure PaaS (e.g. App Services, Storage, Redis Cache, CNPG), Event Hub, Automation, monitoring, Security Centre.
- Network architectures, especially related to Microsoft Azure (e.g. vNets, NSGs, VPN, ExpressRoute, SSL/TLS certificates, DNS).
- Native Azure monitoring
- DevOps Practices (Terraform, Chef and related tools), and how these are leveraged in design and operations to be able to deliver and support hundreds of instances seamlessly.
- Familiarity with other SaaS Cloud solutions (e.g. Salesforce, Office 365)
- Security principles – encryption, authentication, authorisation, integrity, auditing, pen testing etc – and how these are applied in a cloud environment.
The successful candidate will have a proven track record working with a wide range of teams including operations, R&D, consulting and support services. They will work effectively in an internationally distributed, multi-discipline team and must be highly self-motivated and proactive, with excellent problem solving and communication skills.
Personal Abilities
- Excellent & very strong communication and interpersonal skills
- Strong ability to work to deadlines, targets and needs of the role
- Strong ability to manage own time, efficiently and effectively
- Ability to think with an Engineering/Automation/AI-driven mindset to find solutions to technical problems
- Excellent problem-solving skills and the ability to change approach based on information gathered during the process
- A good team player with a can-do attitude
- Ability to work in international, multi discipline, cross functional teams
- Ability to read and understand technical documentation written in English
- Be proactive and energetic in the work situation, seeking to get things done without constant supervision and at the same time being able to multi-task.
- Ability to self-learn and quickly understand new and changing technologies in a fast-moving cloud world, how and if these changes can be leveraged to improve the solution and the overall impact of these in the technical design and operational delivery.
