The Client Our client is one of Australia’s largest and fastest-growing national retailers , managing a massive, high-concurrency data estate that powers hundreds of physical locations and a sophisticated e-commerce platform. They are currently undergoing a major technological shift, moving away from legacy infrastructure toward a modern, high-availability Azure cloud environment. The Project: "Rescue, Refine & Relocate" This is a high-impact, project-based contract for a "heavyweight" SQL specialist. You will be tasked with auditing the current environment, identifying critical vulnerabilities, and leading the technical execution of a large-scale migration to the cloud. The Mission Architectural Audit: Perform a deep-dive "health check" on the current SQL estate to identify and rectify performance bottlenecks (e.g., TempDB contention, locking/blocking). HA/DR Uplift: Evaluate, refine, and stress-test AlwaysOn Availability Groups to ensure 100% business continuity for a 24/7 retail operation. Azure Migration: Act as the technical lead for transitioning complex on-premise workloads to Azure SQL Managed Instance (MI) . Automation: Build and deploy PowerShell scripts to automate patching, monitoring, and environment scaling. Technical Leadership: Serve as the senior point of escalation and provide high-level mentoring to the internal database team to ensure a seamless knowledge transfer. Your Profile We are looking for a Principal-level DBA who has "seen it all" and thrives in high-pressure, high-volume environments. Expertise: 7 years of dedicated MS SQL Server experience (SQL 2012 through to 2022). High Availability: Mastery of AlwaysOn Availability Groups and complex Failover Cluster Instances (FCI). Cloud Proven: Demonstrated success in migrating large-scale enterprise databases to Azure SQL (Managed Instance preferred) . The "SQL Doctor": Deep internals knowledge with the ability to perform expert-level T-SQL tuning and query optimization. Industry Background: Prior experience in high-concurrency sectors (Retail, FMCG, Logistics, or Gaming) is highly regarded. Why Apply? This is a rare opportunity to own the technical roadmap for a major infrastructure uplift within a Tier-1 Australian enterprise. If you prefer high-stakes project work over routine BAU maintenance, this is the contract for you.
