DescriptionJOB SCOPE: Premier Trailer Leasing is advancing its data architecture into a modern hybrid ecosystem. As our Senior SQL Server DBA, you will assume primary operational ownership of our SQL Server estate, hosted on Microsoft Azure virtual machines.
This is a senior, hands-on ownership role for someone who enjoys SQL Server internals, query performance, PowerShell automation, reliability engineering, and database lifecycle management. You will inherit a stable, generally well-maintained estate and have broad latitude to reduce operational friction, modernize database deployment practices, strengthen observability, and improve resilience.
As Premier's broader data platform evolves, SQL Server will remain a vital part of the enterprise architecture. You will lead the continuing operation and improvement of this estate while helping prepare the relational data layer to integrate reliably with our future-state platform.
KEY RESPONSIBILITIES:- Estate & Performance Ownership: Drive database health, capacity planning, indexing strategy, query performance, storage management, and resource utilization across large and VLDB-class SQL Server environments.
- VLDB Operations: Improve backup, restore, integrity-check, maintenance, migration, and nonproduction refresh strategies for databases exceeding 1 TB, including a primary database approaching 4 TB.
- PowerShell & Pipeline Automation: Maintain, troubleshoot, and improve production PowerShell scripts used for database administration, maintenance automation, monitoring, and operational data movement.
- Database Lifecycle & Upgrades: Plan, test, and execute SQL Server version upgrades, patch management, database migrations, and server transitions across the estate.
- Azure VM & Infrastructure Coordination: Manage SQL Server configuration and performance considerations within Microsoft Azure virtual machines, including compute sizing, storage design, disk throughput, networking, availability, backup integration, and coordination with infrastructure and security teams.
- BC/DR & Reliability: Own business continuity and disaster recovery strategies, including backup, recovery, failover, and restoration workflows aligned with SLA requirements.
- Security & Access Governance: Manage privileged access, service accounts, database permissions, auditing, and SQL Server security configuration in partnership with infrastructure and security teams.
- Observability & Custom Tooling: Manage, evolve, and modernize SQL Server alerting and observability using proven community and open-source solutions, including tools such as Erik Darling's Performance Monitor and diagnostic scripts, dbatools, sp_WhoIsActive, and Ola Hallengren maintenance scripts.
- SDLC & CI/CD Modernization: Establish mature Git-based version control, review, release, and rollback practices for database changes, and transition manual deployment processes into reliable automated pipelines.
- Collaborative Triage & Partnership: Partner with our Senior SQL Developer on T-SQL code reviews, stored procedure optimization, dataset development, load routines, and application-team support.
- Documentation & Operational Maturity: Maintain architecture diagrams, recovery procedures, operational runbooks, upgrade records, and support documentation to reduce key-person dependency and ensure repeatable administration.
QUALIFICATIONS & REQUIREMENTS: - Experience: 7+ years as a Production Database Administrator in multi-server Microsoft SQL Server environments, with proven success managing large or VLDB-class databases.
- Azure Infrastructure Experience: Hands-on experience operating SQL Server on Microsoft Azure virtual machines, including VM sizing, storage and disk configuration, network connectivity, monitoring, availability, and coordination with cloud infrastructure teams.
- Workload Management: Experience supporting mixed transactional and reporting workloads in business-critical environments.
- PowerShell Mastery: Strong proficiency with PowerShell for database administration, maintenance automation, monitoring, and operational scripting.
- Upgrade & Migration Expertise: Demonstrated experience planning and performing SQL Server major-version upgrades, patching, and database migrations. Experience with SQL Server 2022 or later, along with earlier supported and legacy versions.
- BC/DR Design: Hands-on experience designing, testing, documenting, and executing SQL Server backup, recovery, failover, and disaster recovery plans.
- SQL Server Internals: Deep understanding of DMVs, wait statistics, Query Store, Extended Events, locking, blocking, memory management, storage behavior, and transaction log management.
- T-SQL & Optimization: Expert-level T-SQL troubleshooting, execution-plan analysis, and stored procedure optimization.
- Source Control Knowledge: Familiarity with Git-based platforms such as Bitbucket or GitHub for tracking database schemas and objects, with an interest in establishing automated deployment practices.
- Communication & Ownership: Ability to independently investigate complex issues, recommend practical solutions, communicate risk clearly, and operate with broad ownership.
- Location: Must be based in, or willing to commute to, the Plano, TX office at least 3 days per week.
PREFERRRED EXPERIENCE: - Familiarity with consuming third-party SaaS REST APIs through PowerShell or Python for lightweight operational data movement.
- Experience managing SQL Server back ends supporting ERP platforms such as Microsoft Dynamics GP or enterprise CRM systems.
- Experience establishing automated database deployment and migration tooling through GitHub Actions, Azure DevOps, or comparable platforms.
- Familiarity with Change Data Capture (CDC) and the operational requirements of using SQL Server as a source for modern ingestion platforms.
WHY JOIN US?You are not stepping into a distressed environment. You are taking ownership of a stable, generally well-maintained SQL Server estate that is central to Premier's operations. You will have broad operational ownership and the opportunity to improve automation, deployment maturity, observability, security, resilience, and VLDB operations. SQL Server will remain a critical part of Premier's architecture as we build a modern enterprise data platform, giving you the opportunity to serve as the operational anchor for our core relational systems during an important period of growth and modernization.
