[Hiring] Senior Database Architect @Poland and Eastern Europe

Role Description

Your client is a software company running a large, business-critical ERP system used to support core operational processes such as payroll, billing, and workforce scheduling. The organisation is in the middle of a multi-year modernisation programme, moving away from a legacy technology stack toward a modern .NET/web-based platform, while keeping the legacy system fully operational in production throughout the transition.

Contract: B2B or Freelance

• Strong, hands-on SQL Server expertise (design, indexing, query optimisation, operational practices).
• Solid working knowledge of PostgreSQL, sufficient to assess migration feasibility and compatibility.
• Proven experience optimising query and index performance in production environments.
• Experience modernising or refactoring databases behind legacy applications.
• Ability to define and set up database observability/monitoring (baselines, diagnostics, wait stats, deadlock detection, alerting).
• A pragmatic, risk-aware approach that balances improvement effort against migration cost and business risk.

Qualifications

• Experience assessing and scoping SQL Server → PostgreSQL migrations (not necessarily having executed a full migration).
• Experience working in environments where legacy and modern systems coexist in production during a transition.
• Comfort working with Specification-Driven Development (SDD) frameworks such as OpenSpec, or similar structured requirements/traceability approaches.
• Ability to produce clear, prioritised, business-readable recommendations for non-DBA stakeholders.
• Work from the European Union region and a work permit are required.

Requirements

• Review the current SQL Server database design, indexes, queries and operational practices.
• Identify performance issues, technical debt, risks and areas that are already working well.
• Recommend and prioritise pragmatic improvements.
• Assess the feasibility of migrating from SQL Server to PostgreSQL — identifying compatibility issues, risks, expected effort and possible migration approaches.
• Define and implement robust database observability and performance monitoring, including performance baselines, query-level diagnostics, wait statistics, blocking/deadlock detection, capacity trends and actionable alerting.
• Work within an AI-native engineering environment, using Specification-Driven Development (SDD) frameworks such as OpenSpec to structure requirements, implementation plans, validation and traceability.

Nice to have

• Prior exposure to legacy 4GL or transpiled/generated codebases.
• Familiarity with .NET/Blazor application ecosystems as a consumer of the data layer.
• Experience with database-heavy ERP systems (payroll, billing, scheduling domains).
• Experience in AI-assisted/AI-native engineering workflows more broadly.

Recruitment Process

• CV review
• HR call
• Interview
• Client Interview
• Decision