The Sr Database Administrator for Disney Experiences plays a key role in ensuring reliable, secure, and highly available database platforms that power magical guest and cast experiences across parks, resorts, cruise, vacation, travel, retail, and consumer operations. In this P3 professional role, you will operate as a skilled, independent worker and effective mentor, solving complex problems and offering new perspectives on existing solutions.
Responsibilities:
In this role, you will take ownership of end-to-end database infrastructure across on-premises and cloud environments that support Disney's creative, customer-focused, and service-minded experiences worldwide. You will act as a proficient problem-solver and resource for colleagues with less experience, working independently with minimal guidance while occasionally leading small, low-risk initiatives that enhance system performance, resiliency, and availability. This role matters because robust database platforms are essential to delivering seamless, innovative guest and cast experiences, and success requires a skilled, detail-oriented, team-oriented administrator with strong communication and mentoring capabilities.
- Build, deploy, and ensure 24/7/365 availability of database infrastructure supporting Disney Experiences technology solutions.
- Provide operational support and administration for relational and NoSQL databases across on-premises and cloud environments, including Amazon RDS or similar database-as-a-service platforms.
- Analyze, design, and deploy fault-tolerant, distributed, and highly available database architectures for high-volume, high-availability systems.
- Perform database performance tuning, troubleshooting, and administration, including proactive identification of issues and design of creative remediation solutions.
- Plan and implement infrastructure changes through capacity forecasting, resource utilization analysis, software release cycles, and right-sizing activities.
- Implement and manage database availability monitoring, metrics, and alerting using tools such as Percona Monitoring and Management, Oracle Enterprise Manager, and cloud provider monitoring solutions.
- Develop and maintain robust backup, restore, and recovery strategies, including disaster recovery planning and execution.
- Leverage automation, Infrastructure as Code, and configuration management tooling to increase operational efficiency while ensuring system reliability and security.
- Prepare and maintain thorough technical documentation, standards, and procedures for database engineering and administration activities.
- Collaborate with internal technology teams and external partners to achieve efficient, cost-effective database implementations and serve as a technical resource on complex projects such as upgrades or migrations.
- Participate in on-call rotations and live event support, managing multiple competing priorities in a fast-paced, deadline-oriented environment.
- Provide oversight and direction to junior team members, acting as a mentor and go-to resource for database-related issues.
Required Qualifications:
- Years Of Experience: 5+ years of relevant professional experience in database administration or closely related technical roles.
- Skilled Sr Database Administrator with minimum 5 years of experience in database administration or related work, operating as an independent worker and effective problem-solver.
- Proficiency with relational and NoSQL databases, including hands-on experience managing Amazon RDS or similar cloud database-as-a-service deployments.
- Strong experience with Oracle and/or PostgreSQL, including database internals, performance tuning, troubleshooting, and administration.
- Experience running, deploying, and maintaining production systems in AWS, with a focus on high availability and resiliency.
- Demonstrated ability to design and deploy fault-tolerant, distributed, and highly available database infrastructure for high availability systems.
- Experience with database availability monitoring and status reporting using tools such as Percona Monitoring and Management, Oracle Enterprise Manager, and/or cloud-native monitoring solutions.
- Well-versed in database backup, restore, recovery strategies, and disaster recovery planning and implementation.
- Ability to manage multiple competing priorities in a fast-paced environment, carrying out assignments with little coaching or guidance.
- Excellent verbal and written communication skills, with strong interpersonal abilities to build relationships with engineering teams and leads.
- Team player who can work independently, mentor junior colleagues, and interface effectively with internal IT teams and external business partners.
Required Education:
- Bachelor's Degree or higher in Computer Science, Information Systems, Software, Electrical or Electronics Engineering, or a comparable technical field of study.
Preferred Qualifications:
- Experience operating within a Database Reliability Engineering (DRE) and/or Systems Reliability Engineering (SRE) role.
- Experience running, deploying, and maintaining production systems in AWS and other cloud providers.
- Hands-on experience with Infrastructure as Code tools such as Terraform or CloudFormation, and configuration management solutions like Ansible or Chef.
- Understanding of and experience with Linux operating systems, networking concepts, and containerized environments.
- Experience building robust paths to production leveraging multiple lifecycles, testing, integration, and CI/CD pipelines.
- Intermediate or higher-level experience in one or more programming languages such as Python, Java, or Go.
- Experience working in Agile software development environments and using source control tools such as Git, GitLab, or GitHub.
- Certified DBA qualification and additional cloud-related certifications.