Amber Labs
Senior Database Administrator
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Senior AWS Database Administrator (Postgres SQL)
Amber Labs | Permanent
Remote First (London) with one per month travel to client site
Active SC Clearance Essential, NPPV3 Clearance (Desirable)
About Amber Labs
Amber Labs is a fast-growing UK technology consultancy delivering digital transformation across enterprise, government and regulated sectors. We specialise in cloud, data, software engineering, user-centred design and AI, helping organisations deliver better services through modern technology and agile ways of working.
We're currently supporting the delivery of critical digital services within a major UK government programme and are looking for an experienced Senior Database Administrator (DBA) to join our growing engineering teams.
This role will support large-scale transformation initiatives within a nationally significant public sector environment, ensuring highly available, secure and resilient database platforms underpin critical digital services.
The Role
As a Senior Database Administrator (DBA), you will provide technical leadership across the design, implementation, optimisation and operational management of enterprise database platforms hosted on AWS.
Working within multidisciplinary agile teams, you'll collaborate closely with solution architects, cloud engineers, software developers, security specialists and operational teams to deliver highly resilient, secure and scalable database solutions. You'll play a key role in architecture decisions, database design, performance optimisation, resilience planning, disaster recovery and operational excellence across mission-critical government services.
This is a hands-on technical leadership role requiring deep expertise in AWS Aurora, Amazon RDS and PostgreSQL, with responsibility for ensuring database platforms remain performant, secure, highly available and operationally robust.
Key Responsibilities
Database Architecture & Design
- Lead the architecture, design and implementation of enterprise database platforms hosted on AWS.
- Design and maintain scalable database schemas, data models, indexing strategies and database standards.
- Define database architecture aligned with security, resilience and performance best practice.
- Contribute to architecture reviews, technical governance and design authority discussions.
- Provide technical leadership across complex database solutions and cloud platform design.
Database Performance & Optimisation
- Optimise database performance through SQL tuning, execution plan analysis and indexing improvements.
- Identify and resolve database bottlenecks across production environments.
- Monitor database performance, utilisation and capacity planning.
- Implement continuous improvements to database efficiency, scalability and operational performance.
- Support proactive monitoring, alerting and operational health across database platforms.
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Resilience, Recovery & Operational Excellence
- Design and implement highly available, resilient database solutions.
- Define, implement and regularly test backup, recovery, replication, failover and disaster recovery processes.
- Drive business continuity and operational resilience across critical services.
- Manage database upgrades, patching, security hardening and lifecycle management.
- Ensure database platforms meet security, compliance and operational requirements.
Data Integrity & Operational Support
- Lead complex troubleshooting across production database environments.
- Perform data reconciliation, integrity validation and root cause analysis of data discrepancies.
- Support incident resolution and recovery activities for business-critical services.
- Maintain operational documentation, standards and support procedures.
- Ensure data quality, consistency and governance across database platforms.
Collaboration & Technical Leadership
- Work closely with architects, developers, cloud engineers and operational teams to deliver scalable cloud-native solutions.
- Provide technical leadership and mentoring to engineering teams.
- Influence database strategy, architecture and engineering best practice.
- Support continuous improvement initiatives across cloud platforms and database services.
- Contribute to agile delivery, knowledge sharing and cross-functional collaboration.
Essential Skills & Experience
- Active SC Clearance
- Extensive experience as a Senior Database Administrator within enterprise or public sector environments.
- Expert knowledge of: AWS Aurora, Amazon RDS, PostgreSQL
- Strong database architecture and solution design experience.
- Proven experience designing highly available, resilient database platforms.
- Extensive SQL development, query optimisation and performance tuning expertise.
- Strong knowledge of database schema design, indexing strategies and data modelling.
- Experience implementing backup, recovery, replication, failover and disaster recovery solutions.
- Hands-on experience supporting and troubleshooting large-scale production database environments.
- Experience leading data reconciliation, integrity validation and data quality activities.
- Strong understanding of AWS services including IAM, CloudWatch, KMS, VPC and Secrets Manager.
- Experience with Infrastructure as Code using Terraform and/or CloudFormation.
- Familiarity with CI/CD practices supporting automated database deployments.
- Excellent stakeholder management, communication and technical leadership skills.
- Experience working within agile multidisciplinary delivery teams.
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Desirable Skills
- NPPV3 Clearance
- AWS Certified Database: Specialty and/or AWS Certified Solutions Architect certification.
- Experience administering MySQL, Microsoft SQL Server, MongoDB or Redis.
- Experience delivering database solutions within highly regulated or public sector environments.
- Experience supporting large-scale cloud migration or digital transformation programmes.
Candidate Profile
The successful candidate will be a recognised database subject matter expert who combines strategic architecture leadership with strong hands-on technical delivery.
You will be comfortable operating at both strategic and operational levels, driving database architecture, resilience and recovery capabilities while remaining actively involved in performance optimisation, troubleshooting and operational support.
You'll possess excellent communication and stakeholder management skills, enabling you to influence technical direction, mentor engineering teams and ensure database platforms remain secure, scalable, resilient and fit for mission-critical government services.
What We Offer
- 25 days annual leave plus public holidays, giving you time to properly switch off and recharge.
- Private medical insurance with Bupa.
- Remote-first working, with access to our Liverpool Street office when you want to collaborate in person.
- Personal training budget to support your professional development.
- Perkbox membership, with access to discounts across retail, travel, dining, wellness and entertainment.
- Electric Vehicle Scheme after one year of service.
- Regular team socials and opportunities to connect across the business
- Employer pension contributions.
- Referral scheme, offering up to £3,000 for successful hires.
- The opportunity to join a growing consultancy early and genuinely influence its direction and success.
Amber Labs is an equal opportunities employer. We are committed to creating an inclusive environment where everyone can thrive, regardless of background, identity or experience.
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