Senior MS SQL Database Engineer
Position Summary
- We are seeking a highly skilled and experienced Senior MS SQL Database Engineer to lead the design, architecture, governance, and operational support of enterprise database platforms. This role combines strategic architecture responsibilities with deep hands-on database administration expertise, ensuring highly available, performant, secure, and resilient SQL Server environments across on-premises and cloud platforms.
- The ideal candidate will serve as the technical leader for SQL Server technologies, drive database modernization initiatives, establish architecture standards, and provide operational support for mission-critical applications. This individual will partner with application teams, infrastructure teams, cloud engineering, security, and business stakeholders to design scalable database solutions while maintaining operational excellence.
Key Responsibilities
Database Engineering & Strategy
- Define and maintain enterprise SQL Server architecture standards and best practices.
- Design scalable, secure, and highly available database solutions supporting critical business applications.
- Lead database modernization initiatives, including cloud adoption, migration, and platform transformation.
- Develop architecture roadmaps for SQL Server, AWS SQL, AWS RDS SQL Server, and related technologies.
- Evaluate emerging database technologies and recommend strategic investments.
- Establish standards for High Availability (HA), Disaster Recovery (DR), backup, recovery, monitoring, and automation.
- Review application database designs and provide guidance on data modeling, indexing strategies, scalability, and performance.
Database Administration
- Perform installation, configuration, patching, upgrading, and maintenance of Microsoft SQL Server environments.
- Administer SQL Server Always On Availability Groups, Failover Cluster Instances, Replication, Log Shipping, and Disaster Recovery solutions.
- Manage database security, auditing, encryption, and compliance requirements.
- Execute backup, recovery, refresh, migration, and upgrade activities.
- Support production, development, test, and disaster recovery environments.
- Monitor database health, capacity, availability, and performance.
Performance & Reliability Engineering
- Diagnose and resolve complex database performance issues.
- Conduct SQL query tuning and optimization.
- Analyze execution plans, indexing strategies, resource utilization, and workload patterns.
- Develop proactive monitoring and automated remediation solutions.
- Perform capacity planning and growth forecasting.
Cloud & Automation
- Architect and support SQL Server solutions within AWS and hybrid cloud environments.
- Lead migrations from on-premises SQL Server to AWS RDS, EC2, and cloud-native platforms.
- Develop Infrastructure-as-Code solutions utilizing Terraform and CI/CD pipelines.
- Create automation solutions using PowerShell, SQL scripts, and orchestration tools.
- Implement self-healing and operational automation capabilities.
Leadership & Technical Governance
- Serve as the technical authority for SQL Server within the organization.
- Mentor and develop junior DBAs and Database Engineers.
- Establish governance processes, architecture reviews, and technical standards.
- Participate in incident response and major outage management.
- Collaborate with application development teams on database design and deployment strategies.
- Provide technical leadership during audits, compliance reviews, and business continuity exercises.
Required Qualifications
- Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, Engineering, or related field.
- 10+ years of Microsoft SQL Server administration experience.
- 5+ years of enterprise database architecture experience.
- Expert knowledge of:
- SQL Server 2019, 2022 and 2025
- Always On Availability Groups
- SQL Server Clustering
- Replication
- Backup and Recovery
- Performance Tuning
- Security and Compliance
- Deep understanding of SQL Server storage engine internals.
- Strong T-SQL development and query optimization skills.
- Experience with SSIS, SSRS, and SQL Server Management Studio.
- Extensive PowerShell scripting and automation experience.
- Strong knowledge of SDLC, DevOps, and Change Management processes.
- Experience supporting large-scale, business-critical database environments.
- Excellent troubleshooting and problem-solving skills.
- Strong written and verbal communication skills.
Preferred Qualifications
- Experience with AWS services including:
- RDS
- EC2
- Aurora
- CloudWatch
- CloudTrail
- Experience with Terraform, GitHub, Bitbucket, Jenkins, or other CI/CD platforms.
- Knowledge of containerized database deployments and Kubernetes.
- Experience with database observability tools such as Foglight and Zenoss.
Success Indicators
- Maintains database availability exceeding established service-level objectives.
- Successfully delivers database modernization and migration initiatives.
- Reduces operational risk through automation and standardization.
- Improves database performance, resiliency, and security posture.
- Enables application teams through scalable and efficient database architectures.
Salary Range:
$99,150.00 - $162,885.00
The salary range reflected above is a good faith estimate of base pay for the primary location of the position. The salary for this position ultimately will be determined based on the education, experience, knowledge, and abilities of the successful candidate. In addition to salary, this role may also be eligible for annual, sales, or other incentive compensation.
Our Promise
At Guardian, you’ll have the support and flexibility to achieve your professional and personal goals. Through skill-building, leadership development and philanthropic opportunities, we provide opportunities to build communities and grow your career, surrounded by diverse colleagues with high ethical standards.
Inspire Well-Being
As part of Guardian’s Purpose – to inspire well-being – we are committed to offering contemporary, supportive, flexible, and inclusive benefits and resources to our colleagues. Explore our company benefits at www.guardianlife.com/careers/corporate/benefits. Benefits apply to full-time eligible employees. Interns are not eligible for most Company benefits.
Equal Employment Opportunity
Guardian is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will be considered for employment without regard to age, race, color, creed, religion, sex, affectional or sexual orientation, national origin, ancestry, marital status, disability, military or veteran status, or any other classification protected by applicable law.
Accommodations
Guardian is committed to providing access, equal opportunity and reasonable accommodation for individuals with disabilities in employment, its services, programs, and activities. Guardian also provides reasonable accommodations to qualified job applicants (and employees) to accommodate the individual's known limitations related to pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions, unless doing so would create an undue hardship. If reasonable accommodation is needed to participate in the job application or interview process, to perform essential job functions, and/or to receive other benefits and privileges of employment, please contact MyHR@glic.com. Please note: this resource is for accommodation requests only. For all other inquires related to your application and careers at Guardian, refer to the Guardian Careers site.
Visa Sponsorship
Guardian Life is not currently or in the foreseeable future sponsoring employment-based visas (e.g., such as an H-1B). In order to be a successful applicant, you must be legally authorized to work in the United States, without the need for employer sponsorship/support now or at any time in the future.
Notice Regarding Guardian’s Use of Artificial Intelligence in Recruitment
As part of Guardian’s job application process, Guardian may use artificial intelligence tools (“AI Tools") to automate the sorting and filtering of information provided by applicants as part of its preliminary screening. This preliminary screening may be used to help identify applicant materials and resumes relative to their indication that the applicant meets the requirements for the specific job for which they are applying, as specified in the listing posted on Guardian’s jobs website (Careers at Guardian at https://www.guardianlife.com/careers). At Guardian, we do not use AI Tools to substantially assist or replace human judgment or discretionary decision making in our hiring process. All hiring decisions will be made by Guardian colleagues.
Please be aware that if you apply for a specific position with Guardian, you will have the choice of opting out of Guardian’s use of AI Tools during the job application process. If you would like to request an alternative process that does not utilize AI Tools or would like to request a reasonable accommodation, within ten business days of your position application, you must email your request to MyHR@glic.com, making sure to provide your name and job requisition identification number. Guardian will retain your applicant materials and resume and all information therefrom in accordance with Guardian’s document retention policy, a copy of which you may request via MyHR@glic.com.
Additionally, at applicable times, Guardian will make public the most recent bias audit results for such AI tools, which may be found here.
Current Guardian Colleagues: Please apply through the internal Jobs Hub in Workday.
