Database Administrator

About us:

Tana empowers brilliant young people in Kenya to start meaningful careers by training them for tech and data roles, and embedding them into full-time, remote positions with companies across North America and Europe.

Position Overview

The role will be placed with a global leader in international mobile top-up, operating high-volume, always-on systems across multiple cloud environments. This Database Administrator position focuses on supporting and optimizing production database environments to ensure the performance, reliability, and availability of core systems.

Responsibilities

• Manage and maintain SQL Server and MongoDB production databases
• Ensure high availability, performance, and reliability of database systems
• Monitor systems and resolve performance or operational issues
• Support incident response and root cause analysis
• Participate in an on-call rotation for out-of-hours production support
• Optimize queries, indexing, and database configurations
• Support and maintain Kafka environments in production
• Collaborate with engineering teams on data infrastructure decisions
• Automate routine tasks using scripting (e.g., PowerShell, T-SQL, Bash) and improve monitoring and observability
• Manage database security and governance, including RBAC, encryption, auditing, patching, upgrades, and vulnerability remediation.
• Lead capacity planning and forecasting initiatives to support scalability, performance, and long-term operational reliability.

Requirements

• 4+ years of experience in a DBA, Database Engineer, or Data Engineering role
• Hands-on experience with Microsoft SQL Server (HA/DR, Always On, indexing, performance tuning)
• Experience working with at least one cloud platform (AWS, Azure, or GCP)
• Hands-on experience with either MongoDB or Apache Kafka in a production environment.
• Strong scripting skills (PowerShell, T-SQL, Bash, or similar)
• Solid understanding of database performance tuning and optimization
• Familiarity with monitoring and observability tools
• Ability to work independently while collaborating with a broader engineering team
• Strong problem-solving, communication skills and a willingness to learn and grow within the role.

Nice to have

• Experience managing or administering the Microsoft BI stack (SSAS/SSRS/SSIS)

Location:

This is a full-time, remote role based in Kenya. Working Hours are 11:00 AM – 8:00 PM EAT. In addition, there will be on-call responsibilities several times per month.

Contracting:

If selected, you will be hired by Tana and embedded full-time with our client.