Principal Database Administrator
Confirmed on the employer's own hiring board on Sep 24, 2026. First seen by Alion on Jul 16, 2026.
We are looking to extend our B2C team with a Principal Database Administrator. Based either in our Sofia or in our new Barcelona office, you will be the most senior operational authority over our data infrastructure across our European hubs. This is a role for a highly experienced, hands-on database professional who has spent years keeping large, high-throughput, 24/7 production databases alive, healthy, and fast. You will own the stability, performance, and security of our clusters day to day, while driving the operational execution of a major cleanup, upgrade, and cloud migration initiative.
The technology currently in use is MySQL (Percona XtraDB Cluster and MariaDB), running multi-terabyte, multi-node clusters serving live players around the clock. You’ll be joining a friendly and open-minded team with an informal attitude and a high level of cooperation.
What will you be doing?
Production Ownership: Act as the ultimate operational owner of our Percona XtraDB Cluster (Galera) and MariaDB environments - a ~22TB estate supporting a 24/7 platform where availability and operational resilience are critical. Work closely with the DB specialists of the company currently hosting and administering our bare-metal servers in Netherlands.
Upgrades & Migrations: Plan and execute complex version upgrades (e.g. Percona XtraDB Cluster 5.7 → 8.4) using rolling, zero-downtime strategies, with rigorous rollback planning.
Cloud Execution: Drive the hands-on execution of our data migration to Amazon Web Services (AWS), including continuous replication pipelines, and hybrid on-prem/cloud topologies.
Data Lifecycle & Cleanup: Design and run large-scale data trimming, partitioning, and archival - online schema migrations on billion-row tables without disrupting live traffic.
Performance Tuning: Diagnose deep engine-level bottlenecks - InnoDB internals, buffer pool behavior, Galera flow control, lock contention, query execution plans, and indexing strategy.
High Availability & DR: Establish and battle-test disaster recovery plans, backup/restore procedures, failover behavior, and replication health across primary clusters and read replicas.
Security & Compliance: Implement encryption at rest and in transit, audit logging, and access controls to meet strict regulatory requirements.
Automation & Monitoring: Build the tooling, alerting, and runbooks that let a lean team operate a large estate reliably.
Mentorship & Standards: Partner with and level up development and infrastructure teams across Bulgaria, Netherlands and Malta, enforcing modern data operational standards and best practices.
Who are you?
Experience: 15+ years of hands-on production database administration, or equivalent depth of experience, with a track record of owning large, mission-critical, high-availability environments.
Core Expertise: Extensive experience with MySQL and MariaDB in production - including Percona XtraDB Cluster / Galera at multi-terabyte scale.
Engine Internals: Genuine understanding of InnoDB internals, replication mechanics, cluster behavior, and how the database behaves under real production stress.
Upgrades & Zero-Downtime Ops: Proven experience executing major version upgrades and online schema changes on live systems without unplanned downtime.
Cloud Depth: Strong, hands-on AWS experience including the real-world limitations of managed database services, not just the happy path.
Backup & Recovery: Demonstrable ownership of backup, restore, and disaster recovery for large datasets, with recovery times you can stand behind.
Location: Must be based in - or willing to relocate to - Sofia, Bulgaria or Barcelona, Spain.
Communication: Strong English language skills for seamless collaboration across international offices, and the judgment to communicate risk clearly to both engineers and leadership.
Nice to have
Professional familiarity or expertise with PostgreSQL is highly valued.
Experience with CDC tooling (e.g. Maxwell, Debezium) and streaming pipelines into data warehouses (Databricks, BigQuery).
Experience operating databases on ZFS.
Past working experience in a Gambling/Casino company or understanding the Gambling/Casino business domain
BS/MS degree in Computer Science, Engineering or a related subject
By joining us, you're not only gaining an opportunity to work and collaborate with the best talent in our industry, you’ll also enjoy a range of fantastic perks!
A competitive and attractive salary
Private health insurance
Annual wellbeing benefit allowance
A weekly breakfast
Social events for building strong relationships with colleagues
About LCKY Group:
LCKY Group brings together a portfolio of leading online casino brands - LuckyCasino, HappyCasino, FlaxCasino, Vera&John, OneCasino and RoyalCasino - alongside its in-house game studio, Swintt. With a strong people-led culture and a proven ability to build and scale in regulated environments, the group is well positioned to accelerate its momentum across key markets.
LCKY Group continues to expand across international markets: Sweden, Finland, Ontario, and Chile, as well as in Spain, Denmark and the Netherlands. The Group is home to a diverse and multiskilled workforce, based in a range of locations, including Malta, Stockholm, Sofia, Barcelona, Hoorn, Estepona, Gibraltar and Melilla.
The Group also operates in the B2B vertical through its in-house game development studio, Swintt, which delivers high-quality slot games to operators worldwide.
With an unshakeable belief in its people that’s woven into the company’s DNA, LCKY Group looks boldly to the future with a focus on building appeal in regulated markets.
Learn more about us at https://www.lckygroup.com/
At LCKY Group we firmly believe that our diversity is what makes us unique and that everyone is welcome to enjoy the ride! We are committed to uphold a high level of diversity and inclusion throughout our group.