Database Administrator (DBA) — U.S. Business Hours

Department: Core Engineering Supports: Product Development, Support, and Onboarding Work schedule: U.S. business hours Company: StayPay About the Role StayPay is seeking a dedicated Database Administrator (DBA) to strengthen database performance, reliability, and development quality across our client environments. Approximately 60% of StayPay’s business logic resides in the database, with significant customization across clients. This makes database expertise critical to the scalability, stability, and quality of our platform. The DBA will provide hands-on support during U.S. business hours, partner closely with developers on SQL design and optimization, proactively monitor database performance, manage the database-related aspects of test-environment readiness, and review database changes created by the Onboarding team. This is not solely a production-support position. The successful candidate will serve as a database engineering partner and quality advocate throughout the software-development and client-delivery lifecycles. Key Responsibilities Database Support and Incident Resolution Provide dedicated database support during U.S. business hours. Diagnose and resolve database performance, reliability, and availability issues. Support Product Development, Support, and Onboarding teams with database-related questions and incidents. Investigate slow-running SQL queries, blocking, resource contention, and other database bottlenecks. Participate in root-cause analysis and recommend preventative improvements. Document recurring issues, resolutions, and operational procedures. SQL Development and Optimization Partner with developers to design, review, and optimize SQL queries, stored procedures, functions, and other database code. Identify inefficient queries and recommend improvements to execution plans, indexing, data access patterns, and database design. Help ensure database logic is maintainable, scalable, reliable, and consistent across client implementations. Provide guidance on handling client-specific database customizations without compromising platform quality. Coach developers and other technical team members on SQL development and performance best practices. Proactive Performance Monitoring Monitor SQL and database performance across client environments. Identify emerging performance risks before they become production incidents. Establish meaningful performance baselines, alerts, and operational health indicators. Analyze query trends, database growth, capacity, and resource utilization. Recommend and implement performance improvements in coordination with engineering teams. Develop reports or dashboards that provide visibility into database health and performance. Test-Environment Readiness Own the database-related aspects of preparing client-specific test environments. Upgrade and synchronize test databases with current application and database versions. Validate database readiness, integrity, configuration, and compatibility before testing begins. Develop repeatable processes and automation to reduce manual environment-preparation work. Partner with Product Development and Quality Assurance to ensure environments support thorough and reliable testing. Reduce the amount of development time spent on database setup and maintenance. Database Code Review and Governance Review and approve database-related pull requests submitted by Product Development and Onboarding teams. Establish and maintain database coding standards, review criteria, and implementation guidelines. Validate database changes for correctness, maintainability, security, scalability, and performance. Identify potential client impact, deployment risks, and backward-compatibility concerns before release. Ensure database changes include appropriate testing, documentation, rollback planning, and performance considerations. Promote consistent database engineering practices across teams and client implementations. Required Qualifications Proven experience as a Database Administrator, Database Engineer, or similar database-focused professional. Strong SQL development, troubleshooting, and query-optimization skills. Experience reviewing execution plans and diagnosing database performance problems. Strong understanding of indexing, locking, blocking, transactions, stored procedures, and relational database design. Experience supporting production databases and resolving time-sensitive incidents. Experience reviewing database code and enforcing development standards. Ability to evaluate database changes for performance, reliability, and deployment risk. Experience managing or refreshing databases in development and test environments. Ability to work independently during U.S. business hours while collaborating with distributed teams. Strong written and verbal communication skills. Ability to explain database concepts and recommendations clearly to developers and other stakeholders. Preferred Qualifications Experience supporting database-intensive, multi-client, or highly customized software platforms. Experience working in a software product-development organization. Familiarity with source control, pull-request workflows, and CI/CD practices for database changes. Experience automating database deployments, upgrades, monitoring, or environment preparation. Familiarity with database monitoring and observability tools. Experience supporting client onboarding, implementation, or data-migration activities. Understanding of database security, access controls, backup, recovery, and business-continuity practices. Experience collaborating with globally distributed engineering teams. Success Measures Success in this role will be demonstrated through: Faster diagnosis and resolution of database issues during U.S. business hours. Improved SQL code quality and application performance. Earlier identification and remediation of client-impacting database risks. Fewer database-related production incidents and recurring performance problems. Reduced Product Development time spent preparing client-specific test environments. Consistent database coding standards and stronger pull-request quality controls. More reliable releases and an improved client experience. Organizational Alignment This role reports to Core Engineering and works across Product Development, Support, and Onboarding. The DBA will serve as the primary database expert during U.S. business hours and will collaborate with engineering resources in other regions to ensure effective knowledge transfer and continuous coverage.