Job Description

Manager, Database Services

Pearson is an international media company with market-leading businesses in education, business information and consumer publishing. Pearson's education business represents about two-thirds of the company, and Penguin publishing and the Financial Times make up the balance. With more than 30,000 employees based in 60 countries, we are a family of businesses that draws on common assets, processes and shares a common purpose: to help our customers live and learn.

Pearson is an Equal Opportunity Employer M/F/V/D, and a member of E-Verify.

Pearson is a drug-free workplace.

Pearson's Assessments and Information group is seeking a well qualified candidate responsible for managing a distributed team of 10+ database administrators to meet the support and engineering requirements of application development and operational teams.

The ideal candidate will be instrumental in the evolution of both operational and technology strategy as it relates to database management. The development of supporting processes and measures will be closely coordinated with other technology teams and management to deliver processes that are readily translated to operational metrics. Significant experience in supporting and delivering projects built on variety of RDBMS platforms including Oracle RAC, MSSQL, and DB2 is valuable. The position requires a clear ability to balance development and infrastructure driven priorities to provide the best outcome to the business in terms of risk, cost, and reputation. This position demands consistent interaction with internal stakeholders to ensure that projects are delivered correctly, on time, and with a high degree of satisfaction and efficiency.


Job Responsibilities:

' Ensure the availability, reliability, and performance of all databases as per service level requirements.
' Serve as technical and management escalation for business impacting issues related to database technologies. Primary contact for incident and problem management as it relates to supported database environments.
' Accountable for compliance with security policies and regulatory requirements.
' Working amongst the technology organization (development, architecture, and operations) to influence and develop new system implementations, application design, data models, performance optimization, and service continuity plans.
' Promote and practice collaboration and teamwork across organizational boundaries with management and staff.
' Develops standards and best practices for Oracle technologies adopted into Pearson's technology stack.
' Demonstrate a clear aptitude for identifying customer needs and defining procedural and technical solutions to fit.
' Responsible for routinely preparing project estimates and baselines. Responsible for tracking milestones with the assistance of project management for small to large scale projects to ensure timely delivery.
' Manage the capacity and utilization of deployed database resources to maximize efficiency, reduce or maintain costs, and minimize operational risk.
' Establish a high-performance database team by building repeatable processes, appropriate measures, and well-defined standards.
' Work closely with members of applications administration and performance management groups to establish a cohesive and complimentary quality of service for our supported applications.
' Select, develop through mentorship, and appraise staff to a highly effective database management team.
' Provide a clear sense of purpose and priority to staff members.
' Prepares routine reports, presentations, and proposals as a means to communicate status and gain support and momentum on key initiatives.
' Seeks to understand the business perspective and external drivers that affect working strategies.
' Effectively manage costs and budget for the group and contribute toward achieving the various financial and resource targets.

' Bachelor's Degree in computer science or related field, Masters Degree is preferred.
' Minimum 10 years experience working as a DBA in an Oracle environment.
' Minimum 3 years experience managing a high performing team of database administrators required.
' Experience managing a team responsible for 24x7 support of mission critical, highly available environments (99.9% uptime or greater).
' Expert experience with Oracle 9i, 10g, RAC, RMAN, ASM, Grid Control, Data Guard, Streams required.
' Experience managing RTO of 4 hours or less and RPO of 1 hour or less.
' Must have experience providing leadership and guidance in crisis situations.
' Balance of technical expertise in database platforms (primarily Oracle with some Microsoft SQL Server) and good managerial skills to provide leadership, direct priority, and complete projects.
' Strong understanding of advanced database concepts.
' Expert experience with Oracle environment configuration, patching, troubleshooting, performance tuning, and monitoring.
' Some experience with Microsoft SQL Server, DB2, Sybase, Windows, RHEL Linux, and Solaris a plus.
' Very good understanding of broad range of technologies from systems, storage, networks, and middleware technologies.
' Some knowledge of best practices frameworks for IT such as ITIL is desirable.