Principal Database Administrator Fully

£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 remoteSalary: £80,000-£90,000Reports to: Director of Engineering and Platform OperationsTeam: 1-2 Database Administrators