Netcore Cloud

Job Title : Head of Database Administration

Location : Mumbai, India

The Opportunity :

Netcore is seeking a visionary and hands-on Head of Database Administration to take complete ownership of our diverse and large-scale database ecosystem.

This is a critical leadership role for a strategic partner who will not only ensure operational excellence but also drive the architectural and financial future of our data infrastructure.

You will be responsible for a multitude of database technologies, including MySQL, MongoDB, Vertica, Cassandra, PostgreSQL, Elasticsearch, and Druid, with plans to incorporate BigQuery.

This position demands a perfect blend of deep technical expertise across various database systems, strategic thinking, and proven leadership.

You will lead the charge in optimizing our database costs, modernizing our architecture, and ensuring the security, reliability, scalability, and performance of the data platforms that power our core products.

Key Responsibilities :

Strategic & Architectural Leadership :

- Database Strategy: Define and execute a long-term database strategy that aligns with business objectives, focusing on high-scale, secure, and resilient systems.

- Architectural Ownership: Lead architectural decisions for all database solutions, embedding security-by-design principles to ensure scalability, resilience, and high availability across our multi-cloud (GCP/AWS) environment.

- Cost Optimization: Develop and implement aggressive strategies for database cost optimization and management across all platforms, providing regular reporting on savings and efficiency.

- Technology Research & Innovation: Lead research and evaluation of new and emerging database technologies and features to enhance performance, reduce costs, and modernize our stack.

- Drive the strategy for database upgrades and consolidation.

- Capacity Planning: Proactively forecast database capacity needs and develop plans to meet future growth in user base, transaction volumes, and data processing loads.

Operational Excellence & Governance

- Database Operations: Own the end-to-end management, health, and performance of all production and non-production database environments.

- Monitoring & Alerting: Design, implement, and refine a comprehensive monitoring, logging, and alerting strategy to ensure system health and enable proactive issue resolution.

- Automation: Champion and implement automation for all facets of database administration, including provisioning, patching, configuration, and routine maintenance.

- Database Security & Hardening: Own and implement comprehensive database security measures, including data encryption (at-rest and in-transit), access control policies (IAM), vulnerability management, regular security audits, and database hardening best practices.

- Performance Tuning: Act as the final point of escalation for complex performance issues.

- Lead deep-dive analysis and tuning for our diverse database systems.

- Backup & Disaster Recovery: Architect, implement, and regularly test robust backup, restore, and disaster recovery plans to ensure data integrity and business continuity.

Team Leadership & Collaboration

- Team Leadership: Build, mentor, and lead a high-performing team of Database Administrators and Engineers, fostering a culture of innovation and continuous improvement.

- Cross-Functional Partnership: Work closely with Development, DevOps, Security, and Product teams to streamline workflows and ensure the seamless delivery of reliable and performant applications.

- Security & Compliance: Champion and enforce robust data security policies and DevSecOps best practices throughout the database lifecycle.

- Ensure all database systems are compliant with industry standards (e.g., SOC 2, ISO 27001) and data privacy regulations.

- Executive Communication: Effectively communicate database strategy, project status, risks, and performance metrics to executive leadership and key stakeholders.

Essential Skills & Experience

- Experience: 12-15+ years in database engineering/administration, with at least 5 years in a leadership role managing teams in high-scale, 24x7 production environments.

- Polyglot Database Expertise: Deep, hands-on experience managing a diverse set of database technologies at scale, including:

- Relational Databases: MySQL, PostgreSQL.

- NoSQL Databases: MongoDB, Cassandra.

- Columnar/Analytics Databases: Vertica, Druid.

- Search Platforms: Elasticsearch.

- Database Security Expertise: Deep understanding of database security principles. This includes hands-on experience implementing encryption, network security, user access control (RBAC/IAM), vulnerability scanning, audit logging, and ensuring compliance with standards like SOC 2 and ISO 27001.

- Cloud & Cost Management: Proven experience managing databases in a multi-cloud environment (GCP, AWS). Demonstrable track record of implementing significant cost optimization strategies for cloud database workloads.

- Architectural Design: Strong experience in designing and implementing secure, scalable, and highly available database architectures.

- Automation Mindset: A strong automation mindset with proficiency in scripting languages (e.g., Python, Bash). Experience with Infrastructure as Code (e.g., Terraform) for database provisioning is highly preferred.

- Observability: Expertise in designing and implementing comprehensive monitoring and observability solutions for large-scale distributed databases (e.g., using Prometheus, Grafana, and cloud-native tools).

- Leadership & Communication: Exceptional ability to lead, inspire, and mentor a technical team. Capable of articulating complex technical concepts to both technical and non-technical audiences