Who are we?

Howden is a collective - a group of talented and passionate people all around the world. Together, we have pushed the boundaries of insurance. We are united by a shared passion and no-limits mind-set, and our strength lies in our ability to collaborate as a powerful international team comprised of 15,000 employees spanning over 100 countries.

Our people are our biggest asset as well as our largest shareholder group and are everything that makes us unique; our inclusive culture, the quality service we offer our clients, and our continued growth, all come from our people-first approach. There’s no such thing as individual success. We all need to play our part, contributing our skills and experience to make a true difference. That’s Howden.

Why work at Howden?

We have always been employee-owned and driven by entrepreneurial spirit. Right from the beginning, we've focused on employing talented individuals and empowering them to make a real difference to the company, whilst building successful and fulfilling careers at the same time. Simply put, we hire talented specialists and give them what they need to make a difference for clients. Always have, always will.

People join Howden for many different reasons, but they stay for the same one: our culture. It’s what sets us apart, and the reason our employees have been turning down disappointed head-hunters for years. Whatever your priorities - work/life balance, career progression, sustainability, volunteering - you’ll find like-minded people driving change at Howden.

Job Description - IT Infrastructure SQL/MySQL DBA

Job Title

IT Infrastructure DBA

Job Role

IT Infrastructure Support

Group Company

Howden Group Holdings

Division

IT

Department

Infrastructure & Operations

Reporting to

IT Infrastructure Data Manager

Role Summary
- This role forms part of a distributed, global infrastructure team that is responsible for the continued availability and support of a hybrid on-premise and cloud infrastructure.
- As part of this role you will be expected to liaise with internal teams and external suppliers and build a good working relationship.
- You will need to be able to multitask, the database team are involved in at least 10 projects at anyone time and all team members must be able to switch between work streams.
- Specifically, working within IT infrastructure support, providing support for Cloud and Data Centre infrastructure by drawing upon their wealth of practical and technical experience.
- The role will be expected to work within a fast-pace environment, support business throughout UK, Europe and Asia.

Job Specific Skills Profile

Technical skills required for the role:

- Database Installation and Configuration and ongoing maintenance,
- Implement best practices for server and database configurations.
- Performance Tuning and Optimization:

- Monitor and optimize database performance.
- Identify and resolve performance bottlenecks.
- Conduct regular performance tuning activities.
- Backup and Recovery:

- Implement and manage database backup and recovery strategies.
- Ensure data integrity and availability through regular backups.
- Security Management:

- Implement and manage database security policies.
- Monitor and audit user access.
- High Availability and Disaster Recovery:

- Configure and maintain high availability solutions (e.g., clustering, mirroring, AlwaysOn).
- Develop and test disaster recovery plans.
- General skills
- T-SQL code.
- Respond to alerts and proactively address issues.
- Collaborate with developers in database design and optimization
- Collaborate with cross-functional teams, including developers, system administrators, and network engineers.
- Experience as a SQL Server DBA.
- Experience as a SQL Server DBA.
- Experience as a MySQL/PostgreSQL DBA.

Desirable Experience
- Exposure to cloud computing such as Azure, in particular the following:

- Azure SQL Database
- Azure Data Factory
- Microsoft Fabric
- Azure Blob storage
- Some ability with coding languages (PowerShell, C#, T-SQL etc).
- Recent MS certifications
- Data Lake technologies.

The role requires:

- Demonstrate examples of similar successful positions in the past.
- Be highly collaborative with the current team, management structure and business leaders.
- Demonstrate a very high level of customer service and empathy to the customer issues.
- Worked in the insurance or financial services sector previously.
- Demonstrate a ‘Can-Do’ attitude.
- Be an excellent all-round communicator through verbal and written communication, possibly multi-lingual with Spanish being highly desirable.

Core Responsibilities for all Staff

Achieve Results through Relationships with All Parties
- Deliver a personal performance that contributes towards Group and/or Company achieving their objectives
- Achieve lasting relationships with all parties (internal clients, suppliers, third parties and other staff)

Delivery of Service
- Consistently deliver an