Senior Database Engineer / Specialist

Cape Town, South Africa | Posted on 14/08/2026

We are looking for a Senior Database Specialist to join an enterprise technology environment, with a strong focus on database architecture, performance optimisation, automation and database ecosystem integration.

The successful candidate will play a key role in developing and enhancing automated database builds, monitoring capabilities and enterprise database solutions, while supporting performance, security, scalability and operational efficiency.

Requirements

Key Responsibilities

• Define and contribute to firmwide database strategies and technology roadmaps .
  
• Design and implement DBaaS patterns across physical and virtualised infrastructure.
  
• Develop database build standards, automation and build support .
  
• Drive database ecosystem integration across tooling, monitoring and security.
  
• Develop and maintain database security engineering standards .
  
• Develop and enhance automated database builds using Unix Shell, Perl, Python, SQL and PL/SQL .
  
• Develop and implement monitoring and control centre solutions covering availability, utilisation, capacity trends and overall database health.
  
• Design and implement database solutions aligned to existing enterprise architecture.
  
• Analyse database workloads and performance to identify bottlenecks and optimisation opportunities.
  
• Define safe concurrency limits and recommended scaling strategies.
  
• Analyse controlled load test results and workload versus performance.
  
• Identify and optimise high-impact queries, including query rewrites, indexing and execution plans.
  
• Eliminate inefficient polling patterns and improve processing architecture.
  
• Develop optimal data retention strategies and reduce database footprint and growth risk.
  
• Develop and implement database performance optimisation plans.
  
• Support balanced workload distribution across the database environment.
  

Required Experience & Skills

• Experience with database architecture, performance optimisation and enterprise database environments .
  
• Strong hands-on SQL and PL/SQL experience.
  
• Experience with Unix Shell scripting .
  
• Experience with Python and/or Perl for database automation.
  
• Experience developing/enhancing automated database builds .
  
• Experience with database monitoring, availability, capacity and health metrics .
  
• Strong understanding of query optimisation, indexing and execution plans .
  
• Experience identifying workload bottlenecks and performance issues .
  
• Experience with database security and enterprise standards .
  
• Understanding of source code control, modular programming and software release management .
  
• Strong analytical, problem-solving and communication skills.
  

Ideal Candidate

A technically strong database specialist who can operate across database architecture, automation, performance engineering, monitoring and optimisation , while communicating effectively with senior management, business stakeholders and wider technical teams.