SQL Database Administrator at thinkahead

AHEAD builds platforms for digital business. By weaving together advances in cloud infrastructure, automation and analytics, and software delivery, we help enterprises deliver on the promise of digital transformation. At AHEAD, we prioritize creating a culture of belonging, where all perspectives and voices are represented, valued, respected, and heard. We create spaces to empower everyone to speak up, make change, and drive the culture at AHEAD.  We are an equal opportunity employer, and do not discriminate based on an individual's race, national origin, color, gender, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, religion, age, disability, marital status, or any other protected characteristic under applicable law, whether actual or perceived.  We embrace all candidates that will contribute to the diversification and enrichment of ideas and perspectives at AHEAD.  We are seeking a highly skilled SQL Server Database Administrator (DBA) responsible for ensuring the availability, performance, security, and scalability of critical database systems. This role demands deep expertise in High Availability (HA) technologies—especially Always On Availability Groups, data archiving strategies, and table partitioning for large-scale OLTP/OLAP workloads and database development Key Responsibilities • 1. High Availability & Disaster Recovery • Design, configure, maintain, and troubleshoot SQL Server Always On Availability Groups for mission-critical environments. • Manage Failover Clustering (WSFC), quorum configuration, and multi-subnet deployments. • Monitor and optimize replication lag, failover readiness, and AG health states. • Develop, maintain, and test DR strategies, including geo-replication and failover runbooks. • Implement backup/restore strategies using Full, Differential, Log backups, copy-only backups, and automated validation. • 2. Database Development & Optimization • Develop and optimize T-SQL code, stored procedures, functions, views, triggers, and scripts. • Review SQL code for performance, security, and standards compliance. • Tune workloads using execution plan analysis, indexing strategies, statistics maintenance, parameter sniffing mitigation, etc. • Collaborate with development teams to design efficient schema, indexing, and query strategies. • 3. Data Archiving & Retention Management • • Design and implement database archiving frameworks for large/older datasets. • Build automated archiving and purge jobs—while ensuring referential integrity and application continuity. • Define data retention policies aligned with compliance and business requirements. • Migrate historical data to secondary storage systems. • 4. Partitioning & Large Dataset Management • Implement and manage table partitioning for large-scale transactional data. • Create and maintain partition functions, schemes, sliding windows, and partition switch strategies. • Optimize data loading, maintenance jobs (index rebuilds, compression), and storage utilization. • 5. Performance Monitoring & Tuning • Monitor and troubleshoot CPU, memory, IO, tempdb, locking/blocking, and wait statistics. • Optimize high-volume transaction environments and resolve performance bottlenecks. • Configure and maintain SQL Server monitoring solutions (DMVs, Extended Events, PerfMon, third-party tools). • 6. Database Maintenance & Operations • Perform routine maintenance—indexing, statistics updates, integrity checks, growth management, filegroup management. • Administer SQL Server instances across DEV, QA, UAT, PROD environments. • Ensure security best practices—roles, permissions, encryption, auditing, and compliance. • Support release deployments and schema changes using version control pipelines. Why AHEAD: Through our daily work and internal groups like Moving Women AHEAD and RISE AHEAD, we value and benefit from diversity of people, ideas, experience, and everything in between. We fuel growth by stacking our office with top-notch technologies in a multi-million-dollar lab, by encouraging cross department training and development, sponsoring certifications and credentials for continued learning. India Employment Benefits include:  Comprehensive health insurance coverage for employees, with options to extend coverage to dependents Paid time off and company holidays, along with additional leave benefits as per policy Flexible work arrangements, supporting work-life balance Learning and development opportunities to support continuous growth and upskilling Employee wellness initiatives and programs focused on physical and mental well-being Retirement and statutory benefits in line with India regulations Inclusive and people-first culture, with a strong focus on collaboration and ownership