Database Administrator Job Description (2026): Duties, Skills and Salary
A database administrator, or DBA, keeps a company's databases running, fast and safe. That means tuning queries and indexes, managing backups and recovery, setting up replication, and controlling who can access what data. When something goes wrong at 2 a.m., the DBA is often the one who gets the page.
Some DBAs specialize in one engine, like PostgreSQL, MySQL or SQL Server, while others manage a mix across on-prem and cloud-managed services like RDS or Cloud SQL. The role increasingly overlaps with platform and data engineering as more teams move toward managed and self-service database infrastructure.
Database Administrator job description template
Copy it, replace everything in [brackets] and cut what doesn't apply. Keep the requirements to what the job really needs.
Template · replace the [brackets]
Database Administrator
[Company] · [City and office days, or remote with the countries or time zones you hire in] · [Full-time]
About [Company]
[Two or three sentences on what your company does, who it serves and why this team matters now.]
About the role
[Company] is hiring a database administrator to keep [database engine] running reliably for [product/team]. You'll own performance, backups and access control, and help engineers write queries that don't bring the database down.
What you'll do
- Monitor database performance and tune slow queries, indexes and schemas.
- Manage backup, recovery and disaster recovery procedures and test them regularly.
- Set up and maintain replication, failover and high-availability configurations.
- Control access and permissions, following least-privilege principles.
- Plan and execute schema migrations with minimal downtime.
- Respond to database incidents and lead root-cause analysis afterward.
- Capacity plan for growth in storage, connections and query load.
- Review application queries and schema changes before they ship.
What you'll bring
- [X]+ years administering [PostgreSQL / MySQL / SQL Server] in production.
- Strong SQL skills, including query tuning and execution plan analysis.
- Experience with backup, recovery and replication strategies.
- Comfortable with on-call rotations and incident response.
- Familiarity with access control, encryption and data security practices.
- Clear communication with engineers about schema and query design.
Nice to have
- Experience with managed cloud database services (RDS, Cloud SQL, Azure SQL).
- Scripting skills in Python or Bash for automation.
- Experience with NoSQL databases such as MongoDB or Redis.
- Knowledge of compliance requirements such as SOC 2, HIPAA or PCI DSS.
What we offer
- [Pay range: e.g. $X–$Y base salary, plus bonus or equity if offered]
- [On-call stipend, certification budget, flexible hours]
- [Health cover, retirement or pension plan, paid time off, parental leave]
- [Work authorization: whether you can sponsor a visa or hire through an employer of record]
[Our process: a recruiter call, a technical interview on query tuning and troubleshooting, a scenario on handling an incident or migration, and a final conversation with the team.]
[Your equal opportunity statement, and how candidates can ask for adjustments during the process]
Put the pay range in the ad. Several US states, including California, Colorado, New York and Washington, require it in job postings, and the EU Pay Transparency Directive gives applicants the right to know the starting pay or its range before the interview.
Database Administrator duties by seniority
What the job usually looks like at each level. Pitch the ad at one level and say which in the title.
Junior
- Monitors database health and runs routine maintenance tasks.
- Assists with backups, restores and access requests under supervision.
- Learns the schema and common failure modes of the production database.
Mid-level
- Owns performance tuning and schema migrations for a database or team.
- Leads incident response for database issues on their systems.
- Designs backup, replication and failover strategies.
Senior
- Sets database standards and architecture across multiple systems.
- Leads capacity planning and major migrations company-wide.
- Mentors other DBAs and partners with engineering leadership on data strategy.
Database Administrator career path
- Junior DBA
- Database Administrator
- Senior DBA
- Database Architect or Head of Data Infrastructure
Database administrator is usually reached from systems administration or backend development roles with heavy database exposure. From here, people move into database architecture, data engineering leadership, or broader infrastructure and platform roles.
Similar roles
- Data Engineer job description
Builds pipelines on top of the databases a DBA administers.
- Systems Administrator job description
Manages broader infrastructure beyond just the database layer.
- Backend Developer job description
Writes the application queries a DBA tunes and reviews.
- Cloud Engineer job description
Manages the cloud infrastructure that hosts managed database services.
Database Administrator job description FAQ
What does a database administrator do?
Keeps databases running reliably: tuning performance, managing backups and recovery, setting up replication, and controlling access. They're usually the first call when a database-related incident happens.
What skills should a database administrator job description require?
Production experience with the specific database engine used, strong SQL and query tuning skills, and backup and recovery experience. Cloud-managed database experience is increasingly common to ask for as well.
Is database administrator an on-call role?
Often yes, since database issues can take down an entire product. State the on-call expectations and rotation frequency clearly, since this affects how candidates judge the role.