Description: Onsite in Washington, DCThe organization is a premier technology integrator delivering technical, engineering, intelligence, and enterprise IT solutions across mission and enterprise lifecycles. Teams design, develop, and sustain offerings that support diplomatic missions, defense requirements, and exploration from the ocean floor to outer space, maintaining leadership in supply chain, hardware integration, and global network integration with a commitment to ethics and integrity.
This is a contract to hire opportunity. Applicants must be willing and able to work on a w2 basis and convert to FTE following contract duration. For our w2 consultants, we offer a great benefits package that includes Medical, Dental, and Vision benefits, 401k with company matching, and life insurance.
Rate: $55.00 to $65.00/hr. w2
Responsibilities: Responsibilities - Design, configure, administer, and troubleshoot SQL Server Always On Availability Groups for mission-critical production environments.
- Manage AG architectures including listeners, replicas, quorum, synchronization modes, and failover strategies.
- Perform planned and unplanned failovers, disaster recovery testing, and high-availability validation.
- Troubleshoot AG issues including replication lag, failover failures, connection routing, and performance degradation.
- Support Always On across on-premises, VMware, and Azure environments and enable low-downtime deployments.
- Own and execute mandatory monthly patching for SQL Server and Oracle, including CUs, service packs, hotfixes, and quarterly PSU/CPU.
- Coordinate database patching with OS and infrastructure cycles, including pre- and post-patch validation and rollback verification.
- Maintain patching documentation, compliance evidence, validation checklists, and audit artifacts, including STIG-driven and emergency patching.
- Install, configure, and manage SQL Server instances and tools such as SSMS, SSRS, SSIS, and SSAS.
- Administer clustering, replication, log shipping, and mirroring solutions.
- Monitor performance, integrity, availability, and security and perform maintenance such as index rebuilds, statistics updates, and DBCC checks.
- Plan and execute upgrades, migrations, and platform transitions including on-premises to cloud.
- Analyze execution plans, optimize SQL, and resolve blocking, deadlocks, and bottlenecks.
- Use monitoring tools including SQL Profiler, Extended Events, and Performance Monitor.
- Manage users, roles, and permissions following least-privilege principles and maintain audit logs.
- Document architectures, Always On designs, patching procedures, and runbooks and report on availability, patching status, performance, capacity, and growth.
- Participate in on-call rotation and after-hours support for patching and outage events, including mandatory monthly patching windows.
Experience Requirements: Experience Requirements - Expert-level experience with SQL Server Always On Availability Groups in production, including design, deployment, and troubleshooting.
- Proven ownership of enterprise database patching cycles with monthly and emergency patching.
- Experience applying SQL Server CUs and Oracle quarterly patches in high-availability environments with minimal or zero downtime.
- Proficiency with SQL Server clustering, Always On AGs, and on-premises to Azure migrations.
- Hands-on administration of SQL Server 2012-2019 and Oracle across on-premises, VMware, and Azure.
- Experience with Azure SQL Managed Instance, SQL Server STIG compliance, and Transparent Data Encryption.
- Experience with Oracle RAC, Oracle Enterprise Manager, RMAN, Data Guard, and Oracle RAC on Windows.
- Proficiency in Linux shell scripting and experience with AWS RDS and EC2-based databases.
- Strong performance troubleshooting and SQL optimization skills.
- Knowledge of AWS concepts required for database operations.
- Experience with disaster recovery testing, recommendations, and on-call production support.
- Experience supporting 247 enterprise production environments (preferred).
- Advanced expertise with Always On AGs across hybrid and cloud architectures (preferred).
- Experience automating maintenance, health checks, and patching validation (preferred).
- Experience administering SQL Server and Oracle on Linux and Windows (preferred).
- Experience with large-scale migrations, upgrades, backups, and restores (preferred).
- Knowledge of compliance-driven operations including STIGs and audit readiness (preferred).
- Strong collaboration skills and willingness to participate in on-call rotations (preferred).
Education Requirements: Education Requirements - Oracle and SQL Server certifications.
- Candidates must be eligible to obtain a public trust clearance.
Recruitment Transparency NoticeEliassen Group values transparency in our recruitment practices. Please be advised that Eliassen Group utilizes artificial intelligence (AI) tools as part of its initial application screening process. You may receive email and SMS notifications from the Eliassen Virtual Recruiting Team (, ) inviting you to complete a brief voice screening as part of your application process. These tools assist our hiring teams in different ways, including but not limited to, assistance in reviewing application materials to help identify candidates whose qualifications most closely match the requirements of the position. All AI-assisted evaluations and responses are reviewed by human recruiters before any hiring decisions are made. The use of AI in our process is intended to support fairness, efficiency, and consistency, and Eliassen Group takes measures to prevent bias or discrimination in connection with its hiring practices. By proceeding, you acknowledge, agree, and consent to Eliassen Group's use of these tools, including AI tools, as part of the application and hiring process.Skills, experience, and other compensable factors will be considered when determining pay rate. The pay range provided in this posting reflects a W2 hourly rate; other employment options may be available that may result in pay outside of the provided range.
W2 employees of Eliassen Group who are regularly scheduled to work 30 or more hours per week are eligible for the following benefits: medical (choice of 3 plans), dental, vision, pre-tax accounts, other voluntary benefits including life and disability insurance, 401(k) with match, and sick time if required by law in the worked-in state/locality.
Please be advised- If anyone reaches out to you about an open position connected with Eliassen Group, please confirm that they have an Eliassen.com email address and never provide personal or financial information to anyone who is not clearly associated with Eliassen Group. If you have any indication of fraudulent activity, please contact .About Eliassen Group:Eliassen Group is a leading strategic consulting company for human-powered solutions. For over 30 years, Eliassen has helped thousands of companies reach further and achieve more with their technology solutions, financial, risk & compliance, and advisory solutions, and clinical solutions. With offices from coast to coast and throughout Europe, Eliassen provides a local community presence, balanced with international reach. Eliassen Group strives to positively impact the lives of their employees, clients, consultants, and the communities in which they operate.Eliassen Group is an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, pregnancy, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, age, protected veteran status, or disability status.Don't miss out on our referral program! If we hire a candidate that you refer us to then you can be eligible for a $1,000 referral check! 
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