[Hiring] Database Administrator (DBA) / Database Engineer @CalAmp

Role Description

CalAmp’s K-12 transportation platform tracks the buses that move ~1 million students every school day across 400+ North American school districts. We run Microsoft SQL Server self-hosted on AWS EC2 — 9 production instances, 600+ customer databases, more than a billion rows of operational data, and growing.

We’re hiring a hands-on Database Engineer with strong production experience who is ready to grow into architecture, automation, and modern engineering practices.

Responsibilities

• Diagnose and fix slow queries, plan regressions, and locking storms across 9 SQL Server instances supporting customer-facing operations.
• Lead the design of reporting replica architecture, likely AWS DMS feeding a multi-tenant Aurora PostgreSQL store.
• Define sound data retention strategy across 600+ customer DBs that doesn’t degrade restore-from-backup integrity.
• Identify measurable savings on SQL Server EE licensing on EC2 through edition choice, reserved instances, right-sizing, and replica strategy.
• Automate the schema-change process across all customer DBs to make it reliable and low-risk.
• Act as the database subject-matter expert who reviews every schema change from developers before it ships.
• Profile and optimize queries and stored procedures alongside the engineers writing them.
• Participate in an on-call rotation that runs once every five weeks, with on-call hours from 6 AM to 11 PM Eastern.

What's different about this team

• We use AI tools across the development lifecycle, including query analysis, schema changes, runbook authoring, and operational workflows.
• Our engineers ship more code per sprint with AI assistance, and we expect our DBA to do the equivalent for database work.
• We value candidates who are open to integrating AI into their workflow to improve speed and quality.

Qualifications

• 4–8 years of hands-on DBA / Database Engineering experience, meaningful share on SQL Server.
• Database SME mindset — experience reviewing engineering schema changes and contributing design insight.
• PostgreSQL proficiency — or willingness to develop it.
• Cloud database experience on AWS — self-hosted SQL Server on EC2 today; RDS familiarity is a plus.
• Performance tuning track record — ability to discuss specific queries fixed.
• Strong SQL skills: query writing, plan reading, index design, locking, and isolation.
• Comfort scripting in Python or PowerShell for automation.
• Experience with both Linux and Windows.
• Knowledge of HA / replication topologies (Always On, log shipping, transactional).
• Strong written communication skills.
• Bachelor’s in CS, Information Systems, or equivalent practical experience.

Strong pluses

• Experience with multi-tenant SaaS data architectures.
• AWS DMS or other CDC replication experience.
• Familiarity with Aurora PostgreSQL.
• Experience in AWS cost optimization.
• Knowledge of Datadog, Dynatrace, or similar APM tools.
• Experience using AI-assisted development tools.
• Background in operationally-critical SaaS (transportation, healthcare, finance).

What we don’t expect

• No need for K-12 domain experience.
• No need for MongoDB experience.
• No need for IoT background.

Logistics

Applicants must be legally authorized to work in the US on a permanent basis. We are unable to sponsor at this time.

If this is the right fit, apply now — interviews this week and next.

Market Minimum

USD $92,509.00/Yr.

Market Maximum

USD $158,587.00/Yr.