Senior Database Administrator
WHO WE ARE
Finalsite is the most valued partner for K-12 schools to build trust, strengthen community, and grow enrollment. Ranked among the best EdTech Companies in America, Finalsite supports more than 7,000 schools and districts worldwide with an integrated platform for websites, communications, mobile apps, enrollment, and marketing services.
Headquartered in Glastonbury, Connecticut, Finalsite is a global company with employees working remotely across nearly every U.S. state, as well as throughout Europe, South America, and Asia.
We believe people do their best work when they feel supported, connected, and empowered to grow. That’s why we invest in our employees through competitive benefits, professional development opportunities, and a collaborative culture built on partnership and purpose. Whether you’re looking to expand your skills, take on new challenges, or make a meaningful impact in education, Finalsite offers the opportunity to grow your career while helping schools thrive.
At Finalsite, every interaction matters - with our clients, with each other, and with the schools and families we serve. Join us and help shape stronger school communities around the world
ROLE DESCRIPTION
As a Senior Database Administrator, you will be the primary stakeholder for the health, performance, and integrity of our products' data environments. We are looking for a technical expert who lives and breathes database engines, specifically CloudSQL/PostgreSQL and MongoDB. Experience with MSSQL and MySQL is a significant plus. You will be responsible for ensuring our systems are not only up and running but are optimized for cost and tuned for peak performance. This is a role for someone who wants to know exactly how the system works, how it will fail, and how to drive it to be better.
LOCATION
100% Remote - Anywhere within the US
DUTIES & RESPONSIBILITIES
Database Expertise: Be an expert at deploying, configuring, and maintaining CloudSQL/PostgreSQL (main focus), MSSQL (migration from), MySQL, and MongoDB. Understand the nuances between them and how to leverage cloud-native solutions effectively.
Data Lifecycle & Ownership: Understand that data value extends beyond the production database. Take ownership of the pipelines and processing layers, ensuring they are as performant and reliable as the core engine. You are not afraid to dig into complex, "unsolvable" problems, working closely with developers and infra teams to ensure the database layer is a seamless part of the application stack (Mindset of Total Ownership).
Performance & Cost Optimization: Be an expert at query tuning and instance right-sizing to drive efficiency and cloud cost-savings.
Security & Compliance: Implement encryption at rest/transit, row-level security, and PII masking, ensuring our environments consistently exceed SOC2, GDPR, and other global compliance standards.
Reliability & Disaster Recovery: Design and implement High Availability (HA) and Disaster Recovery strategies that actually work. Drive system stability and ensure zero data loss.
Observability: Be proficient with monitoring and proactively identify bottlenecks before they impact users. Integrate database observability into our global monitoring stack, treating the database as a first-class citizen in our infrastructure-as-code ecosystem (SRE Integration).
Migration Leadership: Have the steady hand required to lead complex data migrations and schema changes across diverse environments with minimal downtime.
Collaboration & Enablement: Partner with Application Architects during the design phase to ensure data models are scalable and cost-efficient from day one. Mentor developers and build tooling that helps the entire team write and deploy better code and schemas (Developer Enablement). Participate in collaborative designing, problem-solving, and knowledge sharing as an active member of our global engineering community (Team First).
Agile Execution: Operate and manage workflow through Jira, participating in continuous planning to ensure the data roadmap directly drives and supports Finalsite's broader business goals.
Data-Driven Outcomes: Drive and measure results, working with leadership to define and hit key performance and reliability metrics.
AI-Driven Work: Utilize a cutting-edge toolkit including AI coding assistants and automated tuning agents to eliminate toil.
BASIC QUALIFICATIONS
Minimum 7 years of experience as a Database Administrator in high-performance production environments.
Deep technical expertise in MSSQL (including SSIS, SSAS, and SSRS), PostgreSQL, MySQL, and MongoDB, including experience managing databases in GCP and AWS.
Proven Tuning Track Record: Demonstrated ability to significantly improve query performance and reduce cloud infrastructure costs through optimization.
Extensive experience implementing and testing failover clusters, replication, and backup/recovery strategies (Expertise in HA/DR).
Scripting & Automation: Expert ability to bridge the gap between OS-level orchestration (Python, Bash, PowerShell) and engine-level logic (T-SQL, PL/pgSQL, MySQL Procedural, MQL) to build idempotent, version-controlled automation for management, deployments, migrations, and self-healing systems (Scripting & Automation).
Willingness to participate in on-call response with a passion for automating yourself out of a call.
PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS
Hands-on experience with observability platforms (e.g., New Relic, or native cloud tools) for Monitoring & Alerting.
Experience managing databases within audited environments (SOC2, HIPAA, or PCI-DSS) and implementing data privacy controls (Compliance & Security).
RESIDENCY REQUIREMENT
Finalsite offers 100% fully remote employment opportunities, however, these opportunities are limited to permanent residents of the United States. Current residency, as well as continued residency, within the United States is required to obtain (and retain) employment with Finalsite.
DISCLOSURES
Finalsite is proud to be an equal opportunity workplace and is an affirmative action employer. We are committed to equal employment opportunity regardless of race, color, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, age, citizenship, marital status, disability, gender identity or Veteran status. We also consider qualified applicants regardless of criminal histories, consistent with legal requirements. EEO is the Law. If you have a disability or special need that requires accommodation, please contact Finalsite's People Operations Team. Finalsite is committed to the full inclusion of all qualified individuals. As part of this commitment, Finalsite will ensure that persons with disabilities or special needs are provided a reasonable accommodation. Ensure your Finalsite job offer is legitimate and don't fall victim to fraud. Ask your recruiter for a phone call or other type of verbal communication and ensure all email correspondence is from a finalsite.com email address. For added security, where possible, apply through our company website at finalsite.com/jobs.