Senior Database Engineer Jobs in Pittsburgh, PA (NOW HIRING)

Job Summary:
Carnegie Mellon University is a prestigious institution dedicated to innovation and excellence. They are seeking a Senior Database Administrator to manage, secure, and optimize Microsoft SQL Server databases across various platforms, ensuring reliable and cost-effective data solutions. The role involves collaboration with multiple teams to enhance database performance and implement cloud architectures.
Responsibilities:
• Install, configure, and maintain Microsoft SQL Server instances and related components across Windows and cloud platforms.
• Implement and enforce database security measures to protect data across on-prem and cloud deployments, including encryption, access controls, and cloud IAM integrations.
• Monitor database performance, diagnose problems, and apply tuning, indexing, and query optimization to maintain application performance in both environments.
• Perform backup and recovery operations; design and test DR plans using cloud provider capabilities (snapshots, managed backups, cross-region replication) and on-prem strategies.
• Maintain and enforce standards for database environments and technical documentation; ensure cloud governance, tagging, and change management procedures are followed.
• Provide Level-2/Level-3 escalation support and troubleshooting for production incidents and participate in an on-call rotation as required.
• Collaborate with application and cloud/infrastructure teams to design cloud architectures, optimize database costs and performance, and support deployments.
• Other duties as assigned.
• Design, implement, and operate database platforms across public clouds and hybrid architectures — selecting managed services, sizing instances, configuring networking, and implementing secure connectivity (VNet/VPC, private endpoints, peering, VPN/ExpressRoute/Direct Connect).
• Operate and optimize managed cloud database services (Azure SQL, RDS/Aurora, Cloud SQL), NoSQL/document databases (Cosmos DB, DynamoDB), and analytics platforms (Synapse, Redshift, BigQuery). Implement best practices for scalability, availability, and cost.
• Lead and execute database migration efforts (assessment, schema/data migration, cutover, validation), refactoring where appropriate for cloud-native usage, and runbook updates post-migration.
• Implement Infrastructure as Code (Terraform, ARM, CloudFormation) and automations (PowerShell, Azure CLI, AWS CLI) to deploy, configure, and manage databases and related cloud infrastructure reproducibly.
• Create monitoring and alerting (cloud native + SQL monitoring) and own cost governance for database workloads (rightsizing, autoscaling, and reserved instance/commitment strategies).
• Implement cloud security controls, encryption-at-rest/in-transit, key management, IAM policies, and assist with compliance assessments and evidence collection.
• Manage hybrid topologies that span on-prem Windows servers and cloud services, orchestrate failover and DR between on-prem and cloud as needed, and ensure consistent configuration and documentation.
• Act as technical lead on cloud database projects, mentor junior staff, and work with application owners to migrate and modernize application database dependencies.
Qualifications:
Required:
• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Science, Computer Engineering, or a closely related field.
• 3–5 years of database administration experience and 3–5 years of systems administration experience in on-premise and public cloud vendor environments.
• Proven hands-on experience with Microsoft SQL Server and Windows Server is required.
• Hands-on Microsoft SQL Server administration (installation, configuration, upgrades, patching) across on-prem and cloud-hosted deployments (e.g., SQL Server on Windows VMs, SQL Server in containers, SQL Server on Azure/AWS managed VMs).
• Experience with container storage, cloud storage (AWS S3, Azure Blob), monitoring and capacity planning tools, automation (PowerShell, Python, Ansible), and operational tooling (ServiceNow).
• Experience with cloud-managed relational databases and cloud database paradigms, including but not limited to: Managed relational: Azure SQL Database / Managed Instance, Amazon RDS / Aurora, Google Cloud SQL.
• Data warehouse / analytics: Azure Synapse, Amazon Redshift, Google BigQuery.
• NoSQL / document / key-value: Azure Cosmos DB, Amazon DynamoDB, Cloud Firestore, or equivalent.
• Caching & in-memory: Azure Cache for Redis, Amazon ElastiCache.
• Proven experience with HA/DR and scaling in the cloud (multi-AZ, read replicas, geo-replication, managed backups, point-in-time restore, cross-region replication).
• Experience with T-SQL development and debugging, query optimization, index design and maintenance, statistics and plan-analysis in both on-prem and cloud environments.
• Experience with cloud application architectures: microservices, serverless, containerized workloads (Kubernetes/EKS/AKS/GKE), and patterns for connecting applications securely to databases (VPC/VNet, service endpoints, private link).
• Experience with Infrastructure-as-Code and automation: Terraform, ARM templates, CloudFormation, Azure CLI / PowerShell / AWS CLI, CI/CD pipelines for database change management.
• Experience with cloud networking and identity integration: VPN/ExpressRoute/Direct Connect, VPC/VNet design, Azure AD / IAM roles and policies, key management services and cloud KMS integration for encryption.
• Experience with monitoring, observability, and cost governance in cloud: Azure Monitor, AWS CloudWatch, GCP Stackdriver, cloud cost tools and tagging strategies.
• Experience performing migrations from on-premises to cloud, hybrid configurations, lift-and-shift and refactor approaches, and validating performance and security after migration.
• Familiarity with storage/IO tuning for cloud disks and cloud storage (managed disks, EBS, cloud file shares), and cloud backup/restore tooling and retention policies.
• Experience with ITSM/change-management in cloud and hybrid environments, and with secure design practices and compliance controls for cloud data platforms.
• Successful background check.
Preferred:
• Master’s degree or advanced coursework in databases, cloud computing, systems, or information security.
• ITIL Foundation, security certifications (CompTIA Security+, CISSP).
• Microsoft Certified: Azure Database Administrator Associate, Microsoft Certified: Azure Solutions Architect, AWS Database Specialty or AWS Solutions Architect, Google Cloud Professional Data Engineer, Terraform Associate.
Company:
Carnegie Mellon University is a research university offering programs and research across engineering, science, arts, and business. Founded in 1900, the company is headquartered in Pittsburgh, USA, with a team of 5001-10000 employees. The company is currently Late Stage.