Database Administrator

Oracle Database Administrator (Application Support)

Location: East London, fully onsite
Contract: Initial 9 months
Clearance: Active SC required (see below)
IR35: Inside 

Role summary

Keep a business-critical, 24/7 application running with no or minimal downtime. The application runs on Oracle and Linux, on physical hardware and software that is ageing and out of vendor support.

Key responsibilities

• Availability: maintain application uptime for a service available 24/7 across the UK, with no or minimal downtime
• Monitoring: monitor and respond to alerts across three monitoring tools (Oracle Enterprise Manager, SolarWinds and Nagios)
• User support: handle application support requests, including Oracle PL/SQL code analysis and, where needed, database code or data fixes
• Replication: look after an Oracle database using bi-directional replication (Oracle Streams)
• Suppliers: engage with external suppliers who provide core interface applications

Essential requirements

• Active SC clearance. The successful candidate will be put through enhanced SC and DV while in post.
• Strong Oracle DBA experience in production support
• Oracle Streams or comparable replication experience
• Oracle PL/SQL, enough to analyse and fix code and data issues
• Linux administration
• Hands-on use of Oracle Enterprise Manager, SolarWinds and Nagios
• Calm, reliable approach to live-service incidents, with good supplier and user communication

Context

• A project is under way to replace the application, and the replacement is not Oracle. The timeframe is unknown, so the contract may be extended or cut short.
• The environment is legacy and unsupported, so this suits someone who is comfortable keeping old systems stable rather than modernising them.