Senior Database Engineer

About the role

As our Senior Database Engineer, you move TOPdesk from a reactive, outlier-hunting posture on database performance and cost to structural, proactive management of the Azure SQL estate — balancing performance, cost efficiency, and developer enablement across our hybrid SaaS environment.

Azure SQL is a material portion of TOPdesk's hosting cost and the foundation of our customer-facing performance. Today, much of our optimisation happens when something breaks; this role gets ahead of that. Deep database performance engineering is a specialist craft, and this role brings it in-house as we decompose a long-tenured Java / MS SQL heritage platform into microservices.

What this is not: A ticket-driven, request-by-request DBA role. The mission is structural ownership of the Azure SQL estate, not break-fix.

On AI: Deep database expertise is the primary selection criterion. Familiarity with AI-assisted analysis and automation is beneficial and will be developed further in role — we are an increasingly agentic engineering organisation, and you will have the support to grow that practice.

Who you work with

You sit in the Deploy, Run & Optimize lane, reporting to the Engineering Manager for Cloud & SRE, and partner across the teams driving heritage-platform decomposition — bringing deep specialist ownership where database craft is currently spread thin.

What you'll do

Own the estate

• Cost and resource optimisation. Find the inefficiencies — noisy neighbours, abusive API usage, sub-optimal allocation — that drive Azure SQL cost, and implement structural savings.

• Performance engineering. Monitor query response times and execution plans structurally; own index hygiene — remove redundant indexes, add smarter ones for heavy API traffic.

• Observability. Query tagging and monitoring so the business sees which services and customers drive load and cost.

• Resilience and security. Own backup and restore validation and disaster-recovery testing for the SQL estate; partner with Cloud & SRE on high availability, patching and lifecycle, privileged access, and database security.

Enable engineering teams

• Advise teams so they own their data solutions well and prevent data-layer debt accumulating across new microservices.

• Move toward a model where domain teams keep strong control of their data with deep DBA partnership — reducing ad-hoc, externally-run production queries.

Shape the target architecture

• Contribute to decisions on sharding strategies, multi-tenancy models, and event-driven decomposition to reduce database load over time.

Technical environment

• Primary estate: Azure SQL (Managed Instances) and related flavours; elastic pools; multi-tenant SaaS.

• Application layer: Java heritage platform being decomposed into microservices; Jooq, JPA, and custom persistence frameworks in active use.

• Broader stack (context): Python, TypeScript, Vue, Postgres, Azure, Kubernetes; cloud-native / service-oriented architecture; Terraform-managed infrastructure. Your focus is Azure SQL.

• Scale: 10M+ SaaS users; a complex hybrid estate with significant per-tenant variability.

Success in your first year

• A documented baseline of Azure SQL cost, performance, and tenant-impact metrics — and measurable improvement against it.

• An index-hygiene programme delivered, and query tagging in place with cost-per-service and cost-per-tenant attribution.

• Noisy-neighbour and abusive-usage patterns identified, surfaced, and addressed at the source.

• A clear contribution to target-architecture decisions, informed by the actual estate.

• Engineering teams consult you during design, not only after incidents; external-consultant dependency materially reduced.

Required

• At least 5 years hands-on as a Database Administrator, Database Engineer, or Performance Specialist in Microsoft SQL Server environments.

• Deep, current expertise in Microsoft SQL Server, specifically Azure SQL (Managed Instances) and related flavours.

• Proven performance tuning at API scale: index optimisation, execution-plan analysis, query tuning, locking and concurrency.

• Strong on elastic pools, resource sharing, and noisy-neighbour management in multi-tenant SaaS.

• Comfortable advising on multi-tenancy patterns and their trade-offs, and working around ORMs (Jooq, JPA, custom persistence).

• Consultative communicator who can both spot the inefficiency and help ship the code-level fix alongside engineering teams.

Nice to have

• Experience in an environment decomposing a long-tenured heritage platform into microservices.

• A track record of reducing external-consultant dependency for database work.

• Strategic input into sharding, streaming, and decomposition decisions.

What's in it for you

• A strong focus on personal development — including, in the Netherlands, our “10 to Grow” programme: 10% of your time and budget for your own growth.

• A hybrid working environment built on freedom, trust, and responsibility.

• An open, informal, and supportive culture, with collaboration across national borders.

• Excellent employment conditions.

Want to apply?

Does this sound like your next step? Apply with your CV and a short motivation letter via the application form. We are curious about a time you turned a reactive, break-fix database situation into a structural, measured one — what you changed and what it moved.