Technical Database Specialist (Senior)- Sandton at Discovery Limited

Job Purpose

• The Technical Database Specialist is responsible for tasks related to the administration, configuration, performance, integrity and security of the Bank’s databases supported by the EIS team. This requires interfacing with various IT stakeholders (infrastructure support, production operations, business systems, IT security etc.) in ensuring comprehensive operational support for the database systems.  This role is also focussed on the rapid resolution of incidents as part of the Bank’s 24/7 support capability. The person will be required to troubleshoot all components of the SAP HANA Platform including the core database as well as the additional components and functionality.

Areas of responsibility may include but not limited to

Operational Support

• Be part of a team providing 24/7 support for business services delivered on our database platforms. 
• Assist in optimal configuration and maintenance of database servers and processes.
• Monitors capacity usage of the databases and performs forecasting to proactively provide sufficient resources for the database systems.
• Adheres to the change and release processes for infrastructure and software upgrades ensuring that implementation and testing is done compliantly and methodically.        
• Maintains all documentation regarding configuration and procedures for databases, supporting systems and operational support. 
• Participates in the technical knowledge review process ensuring that quality content is published for internal and external consumption.    
• Performs root cause analysis, performance tuning, optimisation and other service improvement activities ensuring optimal database performance. Continuously identifies areas for improvement for efficiency     
• Logs and acts on all incidents according to business expectations and escalates all critical statuses and issues as well as provides recommendations        
• Proactively identifies interconnected problems and develops and models alternative solutions. Also suggests contingency plans to resolve value chain conflicts.

Programme and Project Support. 

• Provides support to the project build team in the build and implementation lifecycle of new services and changes to related services including support for non-production environments 

Other

• Provides input to periodic operational reports according agreed intervals (e.g. daily, weekly and monthly reports).
• Identifies, documents and publishes knowledge for sharing with internal staff. Participate in the technical knowledge review processes and in ensuring the quality of published content.
• Works with internal colleagues to ensure they have the appropriate information and knowledge at hand to be successful in what they do.
• Proactively identifies interconnected problems, develop and model alternative solutions as well as contingency plans to resolve value chain conflicts.
• Establishes and maintains effective relationships with IT stakeholders to ensure compliance and establishing a healthy feedback channel.
• Continuously identifies improvement areas that will enhance efficiency.
• Ensures that tickets in the ITSM tool are attended to all times and reflect the correct status.
• Contributes to the Disaster Recovery Planning activities and tests for the databases and systems
• Participates in the design, planning and testing activities for the resilience and recovery of in scope applications and systems in support of business continuity and disaster recovery functions.

Education and Experience

• Relevant IT Tertiary qualification.
• At least 3 years’ experience in database administration support 
• Experience in SAP Hana DBA, SAP Hana Cockpit, SAP Hana Studio and SAP Hana DPAgent.
• Experience in MS SQL Server database administration would be an advantage.
• ITIL Foundation certification is an added advantage.
• Experience in application or technical support in a corporate environment. 
• Previous experience in the banking or financial services industry will be advantageous. 

Technical Skills or Knowledge

• Technical support strategies and approaches.
• Technical documentation creation and maintenance.
• Database Management systems. 
• Solid understanding of how query/scripts execute and utilize database system resources
• Incident Management and Problem Management procedures
• Understanding of the SAP HANA system architecture, the memory model and memory usage
• Familiar with SAP HANA Cockpit and SAP HANA Studio to monitor system health and troubleshooting
• Administer virtual tables exposed via Smart Data Access
• Use the SAP support site, which include Downloading software and patches; Search for support notes and Log and follow-up on support incidents
• Knowledge of HANA Lifecycle Manager for importing new components 
• Knowledge of HANA Application Lifecycle Management (HALM) and how changes move through the environments.
• Knowledge of HANA Workload Management
• Knowledge of general database concepts
• Knowledge of how to configure all necessary software infrastructure for HANA data provisioning (SDA/SDI) including installation, setup and troubleshooting of third-party Unix ODBC drivers.
• Knowledge to advise and execute on integration to the SAP HANA environment including ODBC, JDBC, ODBO and other SAP supported connectors.
• Knowledge and experience with HANA Table Partitioning
• Knowledge and experience with HANA Table Indexing
• Knowledge and experience of analysing HANA trace and dump files