The Phia Group is comprised of The Phia Group, LLC and Phia Group Consulting, LLC (“PGC”), and is a service-oriented organization assisting employee health plans nationwide. We provide our clients with innovative cost-cutting solutions and constantly expanding service offerings. We continue to enjoy growth thanks to our most valuable resource – our talented and committed team.

The Principal DBA is responsible for implementing, configuring, architecting and maintaining critical Database related to our internally developed software and heavily focused on our SQL Server RDBMS systems. Additional responsibilities expand as noted below:

Essential Duties and Responsibilities include the following. Other duties may be assigned.

Relational Database Management Systems (RDBMS)

• Predominate Db work is on SQL Server Enterprise Edition

o High availability (Always On, Failover Clustering, Log Shipping, Replication)

o Partitioning, Compression, Columnstore Indexes

o Advanced performance tuning (Query Store, DMVs, Extended Events)

o Licensing and resource allocation in cloud environments

o Performing scheduled maintenance and supporting release deployment activities after hours.

• PostgreSQL

o Query optimization and execution plan analysis

o Configuration tuning (work_mem, shared_buffers, parallelism settings)

o Extension usage (PostGIS, TimescaleDB, etc.)

o Logical & streaming replication

Cloud Infrastructure & Platform

2. Cloud Platform Mastery (at least two):

• Azure

o Managed database services (e.g., Amazon RDS, Azure SQL, Cloud SQL)

o Networking, Identity (IAM/Active Directory), and Security in cloud

o Resource automation: ARM, Terraform, CloudFormation

o Cost optimization strategies and cloud scaling techniques

3. Infrastructure as Code & Automation

• Terraform, Ansible, PowerShell, Bash
• CI/CD pipelines for schema deployments (Azure DevOps, GitHub Actions)

Performance, Optimization, and Monitoring

1. Database Performance Tuning

• Index and statistics optimization
• Execution plan analysis across platforms
• Query rewriting and performance diagnostics
• Monitoring tools (SolarWinds, Redgate, pgBadger, Prometheus + Grafana)

2. Scaling & Architecture

• Sharding, partitioning, horizontal/vertical scaling
• Caching strategies (Redis, Memcached)
• Scaling analytics workloads to cloud data warehouses (Snowflake, Synapse, BigQuery)
• Select and implement database management systems to fulfill the organization's requirements by defining data schemas, optimizing data storage, and establishing data access controls and security protocols.
• Assisting developers with query tuning and schema refinement.

Patching, Upgrades, and Security: Operational Resilience

• Security hardening and patching automation
• Backup/restore strategies (native, third-party tools)
• Disaster recovery & business continuity planning
• Database lifecycle management across dev, QA, prod
• Monitoring system's health and performance
• Ensuring high levels of performance, availability, sustainability and security.

Architecture & Leadership

1. Solution Architecture & Design

• End-to-end data pipeline architecture
• Vendor selection and technical evaluations
• Data modeling for OLTP, OLAP, and unstructured scenarios
• Designing for multi-tenancy, compliance (HIPAA, SOC2, etc.)
• Interprets and delivers impactful strategic plans improving data integration, data quality, and data delivery in support of business initiatives and roadmaps

2. Collaboration & Communication

• Leading cross-functional teams
• Mentoring junior DBAs and developers
• Documentation and runbook development
• Communicating performance and architecture choices to non-technical stakeholders
• Providing 24x7 support for critical production systems

Soft Skills & Certifications (Optional but Valuable)

• Certifications: Microsoft Certified: Azure Solutions Architect Expert, AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Professional, PostgreSQL CE, MongoDB Certified DBA
• Strong project management and stakeholder alignment
• Adaptability to emerging tech and platforms

It would be an additional benefit to have skills related to: NoSQL & Unstructured Data Expansion

Modern Data Systems

• Hands-on with NoSQL databases: MongoDB, Cassandra, DynamoDB, Cosmos DB
• Hybrid architecture design: structured + unstructured data
• Data lake integration (e.g., S3, Azure Data Lake) with ETL pipelines
• Semi-structured data support (JSON, XML, Avro, Parquet)

Experience and Qualifications

• 5 years’ experience as a SQL Server DBA or similar role
• Experience with Performance Tuning and Optimization (PTO).
• In-depth knowledge of SQL Server database administration, including database design, installation, configuration, and maintenance
• Experience with backups, restores and recovery models.
• Experience of High Availability (HA) and Disaster Recovery (DR) options for SQL Server.
• Proficiency in the design and implementation of modern data architectures and concepts such as cloud services (AWS, Azure, GCP), real-time data distribution (Kafka, Dataflow), and modern data warehouse tools (Snowflake, Databricks)
• Experience with database technologies such as SQL, NoSQL, Hadoop, or Teradata
• Bachelor’s degree or Associates degree in computer science or related field preferred
• Certification in SQL Server administration (e.g., MCSA: SQL Server or MCSE: Data Management and Analytics) is preferred.
• Critical thinkers with problem-solving and time management skills.

Working Conditions / Physical Demands

Sitting at workstation for prolong periods of time. Extensive computer work. Workstation may be exposed to overhead fluorescent lighting and air conditioning. Fast paced work environment. Operates office equipment including personal computer, copiers, and fax machines.

This job description is not intended to be and should not be construed as an all-inclusive list of all the responsibilities, skills or working conditions associated with the position. While it is intended to accurately reflect the position activities and requirements, the company reserves the right to modify, add or remove duties and assign other duties as necessary. External and internal applicants, as well as position incumbents who become disabled as defined under the Americans with Disabilities Act, must be able to perform the essential job functions (as listed here) either unaided or with the assistance of a reasonable accommodation to be determined by management on a case by case basis.