Principal Database Administrator / Lead DBA with Security Clearance

We are looking for an experienced Principal Database Administrator / Lead DBA who enjoys getting hands-on with complex database environments and taking ownership of their performance, reliability, security, and day-to-day operations.

What You Will Do

You will lead the administration, maintenance, monitoring, performance tuning, and optimization of enterprise database systems supporting demanding mission requirements.

Why It Might Be a Fit

The ideal candidate brings deep practical experience administering and tuning relational and NoSQL databases, managing high-availability environments, troubleshooting resource-intensive workloads, and supporting large-scale data platforms.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in a STEM discipline, such as engineering, computer science, or information technology.
• 5+ years of hands-on experience in enterprise database administration, operations, and performance engineering.
• Strong experience installing, configuring, administering, maintaining, monitoring, and troubleshooting enterprise database systems.
• Deep, hands-on experience administering, troubleshooting, and performance-tuning at least one enterprise database platform: PostgreSQL, Oracle, MySQL, MariaDB, or MongoDB.
• Proven experience with database performance tuning, query optimization, execution plans, indexing strategies, and identifying performance bottlenecks.
• Strong SQL skills and a deep understanding of relational database concepts, schema design, transactions, and data integrity.
• Experience managing database availability, replication, backup and recovery, disaster recovery, and business continuity.
• Experience monitoring database health, diagnosing production issues, resolving performance problems, and implementing preventive maintenance.
• Experience administering databases in Linux/Unix environments, including command-line tools, scripting, and system-level troubleshooting.
• Understanding of how CPU, memory, storage, I/O, networking, and database configuration affect performance and reliability.
• Experience supporting large-scale databases, including multi-terabyte data environments, capacity planning, and growth management.
• Experience administering high-availability or distributed database systems.
• Experience deploying, operating, or monitoring databases in cloud or containerized environments, including Kubernetes.
• Experience supporting database migrations, upgrades, patching, configuration changes, and platform modernization.
• Ability to develop scripts or tools, preferably using Python on Linux, to automate database administration and operational tasks.
• Strong troubleshooting, analytical, documentation, and problem-solving skills.
• Ability to communicate technical findings and recommendations to stakeholders and collaborate effectively across engineering teams.

Benefits

• Competitive benefits package that equates to 50% on top of your annual base salary.
• Tax-qualified profit-sharing retirement plan that NASK contributes to (up to allowable IRS limits).
• Cafeteria plan for benefits.