Database Engineer

Business Unit: IT Operations
Salary range: £28,400 - £42,600 per annum
Location: Flexible – Remote working available with some requirements to attend a HUB as required (typically Glasgow/ Newcastle)

Give your career some extra oomph

Virgin Money is all about disrupting the status quo, taking on the challenges of the future, and saying goodbye to boring banking. We’re on the lookout for like-minded individuals and innovators like you to help push us forward. We’re also transforming how we work to give our colleagues more choice, control and flexibility to live and work how they choose with A Life More Virgin.

Here’s what it means for YOU:

• 38.5 days annual leave for all colleagues (including bank holidays and pro rata if part-time)​
• Up to five extra paid well-being days per year​
• A 35-hour working week
• 20 weeks paid, gender neutral family leave (52 weeks in total) for expectant parents and those looking to adopt
• Market leading Pension & Private Medical Insurance
• Flexible benefits including Cycle to Work, Wellness & Health Assessments and Critical Illness
• Ability to work anywhere in the UK​ (where the role allows)

And you get these Red-Hot Rewards from day one!

You’ll be based within the Data Platform Unit within IT Operations (Core & Data) & be a key member of the team responsible for supporting the bank’s UK distributed database environment.

You will work closely with other staff from IT Operations and beyond including 3rd parties to ensure the support and maintenance of the database estate is functional as required, alongside collaborating with project teams to ensure that change within the database environments is managed and controlled effectively and safely.

This role in a nutshell…

• To provide effective and proactive database support & maintenance of many of the bank’s critical services, which spans across multiple database types (predominately Oracle & Microsoft SQL Server).
• Requirement to provide database administrative support in the shape of:
• Database lifecycle support (provisioning / deletion / patching and upgrading)
• User Access Management
• Back-up and Recovery
• Monitoring and Alerting
• Change and Incident Management
• Troubleshooting and Problem Solving
• Tuning and Optimisation
• Disaster Recovery
• Defect/Incident/Problem investigation across all environments, through to validation and resolution of database issues.
• Collaboration with other teams and escalating where necessary to Lead / Senior Database Engineers to ensure operational issues are resolved within agreed SLAs.
• Promote Virgin Money by role modelling the required behaviours and contributing to the customer experience whilst being an ambassador for the brand.
• Effective support and delivery on team objectives and departments goals.

To be successful you’ll need….

• ITIL Service Management awareness (Incident, Change & Problem Management processes).
• Previous experience or awareness of database administration predominately for Oracle databases and technologies
• Basic knowledge of Red Hat Linux and Microsoft Windows Server Operating Systems.
• A strong willingness to grow and develop as a database administrator and to be a key team player
• To display collaborative behaviours and excellent verbal / written communication skills.

• An ability to troubleshoot issues and make recommendations for system changes to resolve issues or deliver enhancements
• To effectively manage all stakeholders and ensure that they are kept appropriately informed
• Take ownership for your own development including taking proactive steps to improve and maintain your skills, knowledge, and behaviours
• Deliver on all objectives (including functional, departmental, and personal targets/objectives) within agreed timescales and/or targets.

Following a period of training, there will also be an ask of the successful candidate to join a 24/7 on-call rota.  The role also requires occasional out of hours paid overtime.

The following would be brilliant...but not essential…

• • Experience or knowledge of SQL Server Database administration \ support
  • Experience of managing databases within cloud or cloud @ customer environments (Oracle OCI or Oracle Exadata Cloud @ Customer and/or Microsoft Azure) with an awareness of emerging industry trends such as PAAS. DBAS, IAAS
  • Experience or knowledge of setting up and maintaining Oracle Data Guard
  • Experience or knowledge of using Oracle Cloud Control
  • Experience of undertaking database patching and upgrades
  • Knowledge or understanding of Grid Infrastructure
  • Awareness of Flashback technologies
  • Knowledge or understanding of database tuning and optimisation skills
  • Knowledge of the full software development lifecycle: from business/systems analysis, through requirements gathering and functional specification authoring, to development, testing and delivery.
  • Strong analytical and problem-solving skills.

We really need you to have the skills and experience listed in the To be successful you’ll need to…. section above, but the rest is just our wish list, so please don’t let that put you off applying, we’d love to hear from you!  It is just as important to have a positive, can-do attitude and a willingness to keep learning as technology evolves.

Inclusion at Virgin Money

Inclusion is at the heart of everything we do here at Virgin Money. It’s good for you, it’s good for us and it’s amazing for our customers. We know that great minds don’t think alike, so we rely on your diverse thoughts, feelings, beliefs and backgrounds to be the best we can possibly be. Got any questions about this or need some support with your application? We’d love to hear from you so get in touch with our careers team at careers@virginmoney.com.

Now the legal bit…
Living A Life More Virgin allows our colleagues to be based anywhere in the UK (if the role allows it) but we’ll need to you to confirm you have the Right to Work in the UK.

If you’re successful securing a role with us, there are some checks you need to complete before starting. This includes a credit and criminal record check, as well 3 years' worth of satisfactory references.   If the role is part of the Senior Manager and Certification Regime, it requires enhanced pre-employment checks - we’ll ask for 6 years' of regulatory references and once in role, you’ll be subject to periodic employment checks.