Database Administration - Database Administrator

Reporting to the Database Administration Planning lead, the position holder will be responsible for Administration, Performance tuning and 3rd line support of ALL Safaricom Enterprise Database (DB) Systems. The role focuses on both open-source and proprietary databases, including PostgreSQL, GaussDB, MySQL, MongoDB, Cassandra, Redis, Oracle, Microsoft SQL Server, and cloud-based database platforms.

• Manage the full database lifecycle, including installation, configuration, backup/recovery, updates and/or upgrades, automation, and maintenance.
• Ensure 99.99% availability maintained for all critical databases.
• Ensure tickets raised are responded to within the agreed SLA.
• Test Business Continuity (BCP) and High Availability (HA) solutions for critical systems to minimize downtime during maintenance and failures.
• Optimize database performance through tuning, query optimization, indexing, and system resource management.
• Ensure databases comply with security best practices and data integrity standards.
• Ensure regular reviews on information lifecycle management policies is conducted.
• Ensure optimal performance of all systems maintained conforming to the SLA agreements between business and Quality Assurance.
• Implement open-source databases as an alternative to existing proprietary solutions.
• Collaborate with developers, DevOps, and infrastructure teams to improve database efficiency and reliability.
• Automate database administration tasks using scripts and other automation tools.

• Bachelor’s degree in a related technical field and more than four years of hands-on administration of large-scale database environments across open-source and enterprise platforms.
• Proficiency in at least three major RDBMS and two NoSQL technologies (e.g., PostgreSQL, GaussDB, MySQL, Oracle, SQL Server, Cassandra, Redis, MongoDB), with strong capabilities in performance tuning, troubleshooting, migrations, ILM, replication, clustering, sharding, and high-availability.
• Extensive experience managing databases on Linux/Unix and Windows, administering PostgreSQL, MySQL, SQL Server, and MongoDB across development, test, staging, and production environments, including cloud deployments (AWS RDS) and on-premises setups.
• Skilled in designing conceptual, logical, and physical data models; optimizing data movement and integrity; and automating administrative tasks using Bash, Python, or Ansible.
• Hands-on expertise with AWS-hosted PostgreSQL, high-availability architectures, replication, encryption, disaster recovery solutions, and scalable, secure cloud database operations.
• Holds or can hold certifications across major database platforms (PostgreSQL, GaussDB, MySQL, Oracle, MongoDB, Cassandra, SQL Server), cloud certification (AWS), and OS certifications (LPIC, RHCE), with desirable exposure to big data technologies (Hadoop, Spark), event-driven systems (Kafka, RabbitMQ), containerization (Docker, Kubernetes), and data analysis or machine learning methods.  

 

We are the leading telecommunication company in East Africa. Our purpose is to transform lives by connecting people to people, people to opportunities and people to information. We keep over 42 million customers connected and play a critical role in the society, supporting over one million jobs both directly and indirectly while our total economic value was estimated at KES 362 Billion ($ 3.2 billion) for the 12 months through March 2021. We are listed on the Nairobi Securities Exchange (NSE) and with annual revenues of close to KES 298 Billion ($2.5 billion) as at March 2022. We were founded in 1997 as a fully owned subsidiary of Telkom Kenya before a 40 percent acquisition by Vodafone Group PLC in May 2000, and a public offering of 25 percent shares through the NSE in 2008. Under the management of Vodafone Group PLC, we welcomed Michael Joseph, as our first CEO, a few months later in July of 2000. He led the company’s growth to accommodate 16.71 million subscribers from the previous 20,000, largely owing to innovative products like M-PESA in 2007.