DATABASE ADMINISTRATOR – BotswanaPost

Key Responsibilities

• Install, configure, upgrade and administer SQL, PostgreSQL, ClickHouse and other database platforms across sandbox, development, test and production environments.
• Design and maintain high-availability, replication, clustering and connection-pooling configurations to meet availability targets for transactional and analytical workloads.
• Perform proactive capacity planning, storage management and version lifecycle management so that platforms remain supported, patched and sized for growth.
• Automate provisioning, configuration and routine operations using scripting and infrastructure-as-code tooling.
• Maintain accurate, current documentation of database architecture, configurations, standards, runbooks and procedures.
• Implement and operate monitoring, alerting and observability for database health, query performance, replication lag, storage and security events.
• Analyse and tune queries, indexes, schemas, partitioning and configuration to meet transaction and reporting SLAs, working with developers to design efficient data models.
• Establish performance baselines and produce regular capacity and performance reports.
• Design, schedule and verify backup regimes, including point-in-time recovery, in line with defined RTO/RPO and data retention requirements.
• Own the database components of the Active-Passive disaster recovery architecture, including replication to the DR site, failover and failback procedures and periodic DR testing with documented evidence.
• Lead database incident response and root-cause analysis, restoring service within agreed service levels and escalating as required.
• Administer database access on least-privilege and segregation-of-duties principles, including privileged-access management and periodic access reviews.
• Implement encryption at rest and in transit, data masking for non-production environments, audit logging and integrity controls in line with the Data Protection Act, Bank of Botswana, BOCRA and NBFIRA requirements and internal policy.
• Apply security patches and hardening baselines promptly; remediate vulnerability findings and support penetration testing of data platforms.
• Produce audit evidence and respond to internal audit, external audit and regulatory inspection requests concerning data management controls.
• Design and build the database layer for transformation initiatives, including the digital wallet, pension disbursement and eMoney interoperability programmes.
• Participate in vendor and platform evaluations, providing technical assessment of database architecture, data migration, integration and licensing implications.
• Plan and execute data migrations, schema changes and releases through formal change management, working within DevOps/DataOps pipelines alongside development and integration teams.
• Enable analytics and reporting by maintaining well-governed analytical data structures and supporting data integration, APIs and regulatory reporting extracts.
• Provide third-line database support to application, integration, analytics and infrastructure teams and to business systems owners.
• Manage database-related engagements with software vendors, technical support providers and managed service partners, holding them to contracted service levels.
• Mentor IT colleagues on database practices and build in-house capability to reduce key-person dependency on the role.

Requirements

• A degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Information Systems or a related field.
• A minimum of five (5) years’ experience as a database administrator or database engineer, of which at least two (2) years in a financial services, banking or other regulated, high-availability environment.
• Deep, current expertise in SQL and PostgreSQL administration (replication, high availability, performance tuning, backup and point-in-time recovery); working knowledge of analytical/columnar databases such as ClickHouse is a strong advantage.
• Experience with a legacy or commercial database (e.g. Oracle, Microsoft SQL Server, MySQL/MariaDB) and with database migration between platforms.
• Proficiency in Linux administration and in scripting/automation (e.g. Bash, Python, Ansible or Terraform); experience with virtualised environments such as Proxmox VE or VMware.
• Proven experience implementing database security controls: privileged-access management, encryption, auditing, data masking and segregation of duties.
• Knowledge of data protection and financial-sector regulatory requirements (Data Protection Act, Bank of Botswana and NBFIRA guidelines) and of ITIL change, incident and problem management.
• Experience with monitoring/observability tooling, CI/CD or DataOps pipelines and container platforms is an advantage.
• Relevant certification (e.g. PostgreSQL Professional, Oracle OCP, Microsoft Azure Database Administrator, ITIL Foundation) is an advantage.
• Strong Analytical, problem-solving and documentation skills; ability to explain technical risk clearly to non-technical stakeholders; high integrity given the sensitivity of data handled.

Salary

attractive salaries and benefit packages that are commensurate with qualifications and experience

How to Apply

REF Code: BPS 33/2/1 VOL.1 (59)