Senior Database Administrator (DBA)

Who are OnBuy?

OnBuy are an online marketplace who are on a mission of being the best choice for every customer, everywhere. We have recently been named one of the UK's fastest-growing tech companies in the Sunday Times 100 Tech list. All achievements we are very proud of, but we don't let that go to our head. We are all laser focused on our mission and understand the huge joint effort ahead of us needed to succeed.

Working at OnBuy:

We are a team of driven and motivated people who thrive when working at pace. To succeed at OnBuy you need to take charge and fully own your responsibilities, rolling your sleeves up when needed to 'get it done'. Working at OnBuy you are surrounded by so much opportunity, but you must possess the ability to stay focused and prioritise ruthlessly. Most importantly, you will thrive in an ever-changing environment as we are constantly evolving.

At OnBuy, you're not just a number or another cog in a machine. We are creating something really special, and you have the opportunity to affect meaningful change and have your voice heard. We are a close team, who have the opportunity to learn and grow as OnBuy evolves.

About the Role
Overview:

The Senior Database Administrator to lead the design, optimisation, operation, and cost‑effective scaling of our GCP data platform. The role will focus on Cloud SQL (MySQL) and BigQuery, with responsibility for performance, reliability, security, automation and observability across transactional and analytical workloads.

Key Responsibilities:

• Administer high availability‑ setups in CloudSQL.
• Performance tuning: indexing, partitioning, query tuning, load balancing and resource sizing.
• Cost optimisation for Cloud SQL and BigQuery and lifecycle policies.
• Troubleshoot performance and incidents; lead incident response, MTTR ownership, RCA and continuous improvements.
• Provide 2nd-line DBA support: own and resolve escalated database incidents and requests.
• Backup, restore and disaster recovery: author and practice DR plans, run restore drills, validate backups and enforce retention.
• Security and compliance: manage IAM/ACLs, encryption (at rest/in transit), secrets management, access reviews and audit logging.
• Execute database upgrades and change management: plan/coordinate upgrades with rollback plans and compatibility testing.
• Automate as much as possible: IaC (Terraform/Deployment Manager), CI/CD for schema and infra changes, automated remediation and runbooks.
• Capacity planning - forecasting growth.
• Maintaining, monitoring and observability of database solutions; own dashboards, SLOs, logging, metrics and actionable alerts.
• Cost and resource governance: tagging, quota controls, cost monitoring and chargeback recommendations.
• Mentoring and documentation: maintain runbooks, knowledge base, and coach engineers on DB best practices.
• Vendor/third‑party management: manage managed‑service support relationships and SLAs.

Requirements

Essential

• Databases: Cloud SQL (MySQL) and BigQuery; strong knowledge of indexing, query plans, schema refactoring and OLTP patterns.
• Cloud: Production experience with GCP.
• Scripting & IaC: Terraform; Ansible, Git, Bash.
• Tooling: Query Insights, SQL Diagnostic Manager, MySQL Workbench tooling.
• Monitoring & logging: Cloud Monitoring, New Relic or equivalent; database alerting strategy.
• Security & compliance: IAM, VPC, encryption, secrets management and audit logging.
• Operational practices: HA/replication, backups, DR, change management and on-call‑ experience.
• Communication: Strong documentation, runbook writing and stakeholder collaboration.

Desirable

• NoSQL & Caching: Couchbase operations and Memorystore/Redis experience.
• Tooling: DataStream, Airbyte,ORM, Laravel.
• Containers & orchestration: Kubernetes basics where DB tooling/operators are used.
• Agile and Jira: experience in Agile teams (Scrum/Kanban); create/refine user stories, estimate and prioritise work, and use Jira to manage boards and track progress.
• Certifications: Google Cloud Professional Data Engineer or Cloud Architect

Benefits

The salary on offer for this role is £65,000- £75,000 depending on experience.

We also offer the following benefits:

• Company Equity- In return for helping us to grow, we’ll offer you company equity, meaning you own a piece of this business we are all working so hard to build.
• 25 days annual leave + Bank Holidays
• 1 extra day off for your Birthday
• Employee Assistance Programme
• Perks at Work benefit platform
• Opportunities for career development and progression

Our Commitment

OnBuy is an equal opportunities employer. We are dedicated to creating a fair and transparent workforce, starting with a recruitment process that does not discriminate on the basis of gender, sexual orientation, marital or civil partnership status, pregnancy or maternity, gender reassignment, race, colour, nationality, ethnic or national origin, religion or belief, disability, or age.