{"id":1019077,"url":"https://alion.io/job/lcky-group-principal-database-administrator","title":"Principal Database Administrator","company":{"id":674430,"name":"LCKY Group","domain":"lckygroup.com","url":"https://alion.io/company/lckygroup","size_band":null,"is_staffing_agency":false,"is_intermediary":false,"listed_via":null,"ats_vendor":"Teamtailor","truth_index":null},"role":"Data Science","role_family":"Data Science","seniority":"lead","employment_type":"full_time","work_mode":"on_site","remote_scope":null,"remote_scope_basis":null,"remote_working_hours":null,"hiring_geo_confidence":"explicit","locations":["Sofia, Bulgaria"],"countries":["BG"],"hiring_countries":[],"hiring_countries_total":0,"salary":null,"salary_estimate":{"min_usd":37000,"max_usd":80000,"period":"year","method":"global_role_cell_scaled_by_country","sample_n":328},"experience_years_min":15,"visa_sponsorship":false,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":false,"technologies":[{"name":"AWS","optional":false},{"name":"MariaDB","optional":false},{"name":"MySQL","optional":false},{"name":"BigQuery","optional":true},{"name":"Databricks","optional":true},{"name":"Google BigQuery","optional":true},{"name":"PostgreSQL","optional":true}],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-07-16T09:34:23Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-07-16","last_verified_at":"2026-09-24T09:20:18Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":70,"trust":{"level":"ok","repost_count":null,"flags":[],"days_open":70},"description":"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.\nThe 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.\nWhat will you be doing?\nProduction 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.\n\nUpgrades & 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.\n\nCloud 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.\n\nData Lifecycle & Cleanup: Design and run large-scale data trimming, partitioning, and archival - online schema migrations on billion-row tables without disrupting live traffic.\n\nPerformance Tuning: Diagnose deep engine-level bottlenecks - InnoDB internals, buffer pool behavior, Galera flow control, lock contention, query execution plans, and indexing strategy.\n\nHigh Availability & DR: Establish and battle-test disaster recovery plans, backup/restore procedures, failover behavior, and replication health across primary clusters and read replicas.\n\nSecurity & Compliance: Implement encryption at rest and in transit, audit logging, and access controls to meet strict regulatory requirements.\n\nAutomation & Monitoring: Build the tooling, alerting, and runbooks that let a lean team operate a large estate reliably.\n\nMentorship & Standards: Partner with and level up development and infrastructure teams across Bulgaria, Netherlands and Malta, enforcing modern data operational standards and best practices.\n\nWho are you?\nExperience: 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.\n\nCore Expertise: Extensive experience with MySQL and MariaDB in production - including Percona XtraDB Cluster / Galera at multi-terabyte scale.\n\nEngine Internals: Genuine understanding of InnoDB internals, replication mechanics, cluster behavior, and how the database behaves under real production stress.\n\nUpgrades & Zero-Downtime Ops: Proven experience executing major version upgrades and online schema changes on live systems without unplanned downtime.\n\nCloud Depth: Strong, hands-on AWS experience including the real-world limitations of managed database services, not just the happy path.\n\nBackup & Recovery: Demonstrable ownership of backup, restore, and disaster recovery for large datasets, with recovery times you can stand behind.\n\nLocation: Must be based in - or willing to relocate to - Sofia, Bulgaria or Barcelona, Spain.\n\nCommunication: Strong English language skills for seamless collaboration across international offices, and the judgment to communicate risk clearly to both engineers and leadership.\n\nNice to have\nProfessional familiarity or expertise with PostgreSQL is highly valued.\n\nExperience with CDC tooling (e.g. Maxwell, Debezium) and streaming pipelines into data warehouses (Databricks, BigQuery).\n\nExperience operating databases on ZFS.\n\nPast working experience in a Gambling/Casino company or understanding the Gambling/Casino business domain\n\nBS/MS degree in Computer Science, Engineering or a related subject\n\nBy 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!\nA competitive and attractive salary\n\nPrivate health insurance\n\nAnnual wellbeing benefit allowance\n\nA weekly breakfast\n\nSocial events for building strong relationships with colleagues\n\nAbout LCKY Group:\nLCKY 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.\nLCKY 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.\nThe Group also operates in the B2B vertical through its in-house game development studio, Swintt, which delivers high-quality slot games to operators worldwide.\nWith 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.\nLearn more about us at https://www.lckygroup.com/\nAt 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.","description_format":"text","description_chars":5923,"description_truncated":false,"requirements":{"experience_years_min":15,"management_years_min":null,"team_size_min":null,"manages_managers":false,"education":{"level":"bachelor","optional":false},"security_clearance":false,"languages":[{"language":"English","level":"All levels","optional":false}]},"benefits":["Health insurance"],"hiring_locations":[{"name":"Bulgaria","iso":"BG","kind":"country"},{"name":"Spain","iso":"ES","kind":"country"},{"name":"Malta","iso":"MT","kind":"country"}],"hiring_excludes":[],"relocation_offered":true,"industries":["Gaming","Professional Services","iGaming & Gambling"],"lifecycle":[{"event":"open","at":"2026-09-18T02:19:28Z"}],"liveness":{"score":12,"band":"cold","label":"Long shot","p_open":0.9,"p_active":0.459,"p_room":0.28,"age_days":69,"expected_fill_days":23,"reasons":["conf:68","win:tail","crowd:"],"computed_at":"2026-09-24T05:45:00Z"},"pay":null,"html_url":"https://alion.io/job/lcky-group-principal-database-administrator","json_url":"https://alion.io/job/lcky-group-principal-database-administrator.json","meta":{"generated_at":"2026-09-25T00:01:44Z","cache_seconds":300,"methodology":"https://alion.io/methodology","terms":"https://alion.io/terms","contact":"https://alion.io/contact","api":"https://alion.io/developers","usage":{"tier":"crawler","counted_by":"address","units_charged":1,"used_today":41,"day_limit":5000,"remaining_today":4959,"minute_limit":60,"resets_at":"2026-09-26T00:00:00Z"}}}