Senior Database Administrator

VitalSource®, is hiring a Senior Database Administrator to contribute to our Engineering team located in Raleigh NC, Franklin TN, Chicago IL, or Boston MA (preferred locations). Applicants outside of these preferred locations will still be considered. There is a 10% travel requirement for this role for in-person team meetings.

Join VitalSource as a Senior Database Administrator and help shape the backbone of our data infrastructure. We're looking for a skilled and strategic thinker to take ownership of the performance, integrity, and security of our expanding database environment. In this pivotal role, you'll optimize critical systems, collaborate with application teams to drive efficient data usage, and implement robust strategies for scalability, backup, and recovery. You'll also contribute to high-level architectural planning, ensuring our data solutions align with and support the company's long-term goals.

Key Responsibilities:

• Collaborate with developers to design efficient schemas; partner with application teams to help design solutions and choose appropriate database technologies.
• Assist application teams with query optimization and best practices for data manipulation.  
• Collaborate with teams on data hygiene practices to maintain data quality and accuracy.
• Monitor and fine-tune database performance; optimize queries, indexes, and caching mechanisms; implement best practices for scalability.  
• Manage user access and permissions; implement encryption, authentication, and authorization; regularly audit security configurations; assist in planning and executing PII purging.  
• Design and maintain backup strategies; test and validate disaster recovery procedures; ensure data consistency and integrity; develop and implement partitioning and sharding strategies for large tables to enhance restore times and reduce deadlocks.  
• Review and suggest appropriate database architectures; plan and execute database upgrades.  
• Set up monitoring tools (e.g. New Relic, Datadog, Prometheus) for proactive issue detection; investigate and resolve database-related incidents; provide timely support during critical incidents; maintain high uptime through careful planning and coordination.  
• This role will require participation as on-call escalation for critical database issues.
• Other duties may be assigned by supervisor or leadership as business needs arise.

Required Qualifications:

• 10+ years of database administration experience.
• Bachelor’s degree in computer science, information systems, or equivalent experience.
• Prior experience in relational DBMS, NoSQL DBMS, cloud-based relational databases preferred.
• Certifications such as AWS Certified Database- Specialty or Google Cloud Professional Database Engineer are a plus.

Technical Skills:

• 7+ years of experience with relational database management systems (RDBMS) such as MySQL
• 5+ years of experience with cloud-based relational databases such as Cloud SQL, Amazon RDS, or Aurora.
• 2+ years of experience with data warehousing solutions such BigQuery.
• 5+ years of experience with NoSQL databases, including document-oriented (e.g., MongoDB), key-value stores (e.g., Redis, KeyDB), and search platforms (e.g., ElasticSearch).
• 1+ years of experience with graph databases (e.g., Neo4j)
• Familiarity with infrastructure as code tools like Terraform and automation/orchestration tools.  
• Familiarity with Kubernetes and containerized databased deployments is a plus.
• Proficiency in scripting languages such as Python, Bash, or SQL for automation tasks is preferred.
• Expertise with database performance tuning, query optimization, and scalability implementation.  
• Expertise in database design and schema management, with the ability to collaborate with developers.  
• Experience in capacity planning, service provisioning, and decommissioning.  

Soft Skills & Competencies:

• Strong leadership, communication, and collaboration skills.
• Ability to prioritize and manage multiple projects efficiently.
• High level of attention to detail and organizational skills.
• Ability to adapt to changing priorities and business needs.

Salary Range: $117,000 to $143,000

What We Offer:

• Culture: Collaborative, Inclusive, and Mission-driven. 
• More in your pocket: Competitive base salary and a strong variable component.
• We take care of all aspects of our people: Generous, well-rounded benefits such as Medical, Vision, Dental, Life, Disability, Critical Illness, Accident, FSA, HSA, ID Protection, Pet and Legal Insurance 
• Retirement: 401K match up to 5%.
• We support our families: 12 weeks of paid parental leave.
• Continued education: Use our tuition reimbursement program.
• The Importance of Balance: Start at 4 weeks’ vacation, 12 sick days, 11 company holidays, and 3 personal days.
• Flexibility: Flexible work schedules and remote capabilities (by team) - feel free to skip the commute and hit your deadlines from home.
• Wellness: Opportunities for fitness challenges and rewards.

Who We Are:

VitalSource Technologies, LLC has powered digital content delivery across the higher education ecosystem for over 30 years. Winner of the 2024 CODiE award for Most Innovative Ed Tech company, VitalSource delivers more than 28 million learning materials globally each year. With unmatched scale, the VitalSource Learning Delivery Network is trusted by thousands of content providers and institutions worldwide to deliver impactful learning experiences, fuel affordable access programs, and drive a learning advantage for every student. Learn more at http://get.vitalsource.com/  and follow us on LinkedIn.

All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, work related mental or physical disability, veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity, or genetic information.

• EEO/AA Employer/Vet/Disabled
• We participate in EVerify.
• EEO Poster in English 
• EEO Poster in Spanish