SQL Server DBA - AWS EC2 - Performance Tuning Expertise is Key

SQL Server DBA - Performance Tuning Specialist / REMOTE

About our Customer:

Our direct customer, a global Fortune 500 company & a leader in the Food Services industry is looking for SQL Server DBA with Performance tuning experience to drive the end-to-end performance of a mission-critical OLTP databases supporting critical business operations.

Required Skills & Experience:

• Deep SQL Server Expertise: 8+ years tuning SQL Server 2016/2019/2022 in high-volume OLTP environments ( 100M rows)
• Performance-First Mindset: Mastery of execution plans, wait-stat analysis, index strategies, and statistics management
• AWS Savvy: Hands-on with EC2-hosted SQL Server; strong grasp of EBS volume types, networking, and CloudWatch
• Scripting & Automation: Proficient in PowerShell/Python for admin tasks and CI/CD integration (Azure DevOps or equivalent)
• Diagnostic Toolset: Comfortable with SQL Profiler/Extended Events, Query Store, Plan Explorer, and third-party profilers (FogLight, SolarWinds, etc.)
• Communication & Collaboration: Ability to translate complex findings into actionable recommendations for developers and architects in two-week sprints
  

Responsibilities:

• In-Depth Performance Analysis:
  • Profile top-heavy queries using DMVs (e.g. sys.dm_exec_query_stats, sys.dm_io_virtual_file_stats)
  • Capture and analyze Extended Events sessions and Query Store data to identify plan regressions and parameter sniffing issues
• Index & Statistics Management:
  • Design and implement covering/non-clustered indexes, filtered indexes, and indexed views
  • Automate statistics updates and histograms to optimize cardinality estimates
• SQL Refactoring & Plan Stabilization:
  • Rewrite stored procedures, TVFs, and ad-hoc statements for set-based operations
  • Employ Plan Guides, Query Hints, and parameterization strategies to enforce optimal execution plans
• Server-Level Tuning:
  • Configure NUMA, affinity masks, MAXDOP, cost threshold for parallelism, and lock escalation settings
  • Optimize TempDB layout (multiple data files, trace flags 1118/1117), autogrowth settings, and file-striping across EBS volumes
    
• AWS & Infrastructure:
  • Right-size EC2 instance types (vCPU, memory) and EBS provisioning (IOPS vs. throughput)
  • Integrate with AWS monitoring (CloudWatch metrics, Enhanced Monitoring) and alert on disk queue lengths, buffer pool usage, wait stats
    
• Automation & CI/CD:
  • Script environment provisioning and configuration via PowerShell, AWS CLI / CloudFormation / CDK
  • Integrate database deployment and migration into Azure DevOps

• Benchmarking & Reporting:
  • Develop load-testing scenarios), capture baselines, validate and drive continuous improvement
  • Deliver detailed before/after performance reports with clear metrics (TPS, latency percentiles, CPU/IO utilization) aligned to business transactions and processes.

Nice-to-Haves

• Familiarity with containerized SQL Server (Docker/Kubernetes) or managed services (RDS/Aurora)
• Experience with Resource Governor, Partitioning, and In-memory technologies (In-Memory OLTP, Columnstore)
• Certifications: Microsoft Certified: Azure Database Administrator, AWS Certified Database Specialty