NoSQL Database Administrator

Position: senior level NoSQL Database Administrator

Location: Remote

Duration: 12 Months

JOB DESCRIPTION
Role Overview

seeking a senior‑level NoSQL Database Administrator to support the Property Engagement Platform (PEP), a mission‑critical, customer‑facing system. While the NoSQL footprint is smaller than Hilton’s relational environment, this role is high impact due to strict availability, latency, and performance requirements. This is a hands‑on, production‑focused role, not advisory or theoretical.

The position is fully remote, operates on U.S. Central Time, and requires a self‑directed senior resource who can operate independently in a complex cloud environment.

Top Technical Skills to Prioritize (Must‑Have)

**Must have 2-4 years of hands-on-use of Couchbase experience**

Recruiters should prioritize candidates with real production ownership, not just exposure.

• AWS DynamoDB (Senior‑Level, Production Experience)
  • Hands‑on operational support of DynamoDB in live environments
  • Strong understanding of NoSQL data modeling, access patterns, partitioning, and consistency models
  • Experience making tradeoffs between on‑demand vs provisioned throughput, autoscaling, and cost optimization
• DAX (Strong Preference)
  • Practical experience supporting DynamoDB Accelerator (DAX) in production
  • Understanding of cache behavior, performance tuning, failover considerations, and latency‑sensitive workloads
• AWS Cloud Fundamentals
  • IAM (least‑privilege access, role‑based permissions)
  • CloudWatch monitoring and alerting
  • KMS, encryption at rest and in transit
  • VPC/networking awareness as it relates to database services
• Infrastructure as Code
  • Experience using Terraform (or similar IaC tools) to provision and manage DynamoDB, DAX, and supporting infrastructure
  • Comfort working alongside Cloud Engineering / DevOps teams
• Production Operations
  • Experience supporting 24/7 platforms
  • Participation in on‑call rotations
  • Incident response, troubleshooting, and post‑incident follow‑ups
  • Ability to document runbooks and operational best practices

Nice‑to‑Have / Strong Differentiators

These are not required, but should be flagged as strong positives:

• Couchbase (cluster management, upgrades, XDCR, performance tuning)
• Amazon DocumentDB or MongoDB‑compatible platforms
• Datadog for NoSQL monitoring, alerting, and dashboards
• Background transitioning workloads from relational (MySQL/Postgres) to NoSQL
• Experience supporting high‑scale or multi‑region architectures

Soft Skills & Seniority Indicators (Very Important)

This role requires a senior mindset, not just technical skill. Recruiters should screen for:

• Ability to work independently
  • Comfortable owning environments end‑to‑end with minimal hand‑holding
  • Can prioritize work, identify risks, and take initiative
• Strong communication skills
  • Able to clearly explain NoSQL concepts and tradeoffs to application teams
  • Comfortable partnering with developers, cloud engineers, and DevOps
  • Can translate technical issues into clear, actionable explanations
• Calm under pressure
  • Experience supporting production systems where downtime or latency has real impact
  • Can troubleshoot complex issues methodically during incidents
• Process‑oriented but pragmatic
  • Understands operational rigor (change management, documentation)
  • Can design low‑impact deployment and change strategies

What Recruiters Should Listen For in Screening Calls

Good signs

• Candidate describes specific DynamoDB use cases, not generic AWS experience
• Can explain why certain access patterns or partition strategies were chosen
• Has owned production incidents and can explain lessons learned
• Comfortable discussing cost vs performance tradeoffs
• Talks about collaboration with application teams, not working in isolation

Red flags

• Only theoretical knowledge of DynamoDB or NoSQL
• No real on‑call or production ownership experience
• Focuses heavily on relational databases without clear NoSQL depth
• Struggles to explain DAX, caching behavior, or performance tuning
• Needs heavy direction or escalation to solve issues

Logistics to Confirm Early

• Fully remote, U.S.‑based
• Availability during U.S. Central Time business hours
• Willingness to participate in on‑call rotations
• Senior‑level contract resource comfortable with hands‑on delivery