SQL Server Database Administrator – Consultant

This position will provide advanced database administration, performance tuning, security hardening, disaster recovery planning, and cross-database standardization support for enterprise SQL Server environments supporting:

Specific Duties Include (But Are Not Limited To)

• Statewide Case Management Systems (CMS environments)
• Judicial Data Warehouse (DW)
• Public Index & Reporting Systems
• Power BI and Interactive Data Dashboards
• Cross-county reporting standardization initiatives
• Integrated court and justice partner systems

The DBA will work closely with the Deputy Director of Applications, IT Applications Development Manager, developers, data analysts, and infrastructure teams to ensure:

• Data integrity
• High availability
• Performance optimization
• Compliance with statewide data governance initiatives

Key Responsibilities

• SQL Server Administration (v2016+)
• Administer and maintain SQL Server instances across multiple judicial environments
• Manage contained users, authentication models, and database-level security
• Configure and monitor SQL Agent jobs, maintenance plans, and index strategies
• Implement and validate backup/restore procedures and disaster recovery plans
• Support high availability configurations (Always On, clustering where applicable)
• Performance Tuning & Optimization
• Optimize large-scale tables supporting court case data
• Analyze and tune: Stored procedures, Dynamic SQL, Cross-database queries, CTE-heavy workloads and Index fragmentation and statistics
• Review and optimize ETL loops across multiple CMS databases
• Reduce blocking, deadlocks, and long-running transactions
• Implement partitioning strategies where appropriate
• Data Integrity & Standardization
• Assist with: Referential integrity enforcement, Foreign key reconciliation, Identity reseeding and Data remediation & cleanup
• Support statewide standardization of: County codes, Circuit mappings, Court type alignment and Roster type consistency
• Ensure alignment with the Chief Justice’s data initiative and reporting aggregation standards
• Data Warehouse & Reporting Support
• Optimize fact/dimension loading processes
• Support performance tuning for Power BI reporting back-end queries
• Assist with: Indexed views, Aggregation tables and Incremental load strategies
• Collaborate on data quality validation routines
• Security & Compliance
• Harden SQL Server instances against unauthorized access
• Review role-based security for judicial data
• Ensure compliance with: Judicial confidentiality standards, CJIS considerations (where applicable), Monitor audit logs and security events
• Support WAF/SQL visibility requirements for secure application traffic
• Work with Imperva or similar security appliances
• Automation & DevOps Support
• Assist in scripting deployment pipelines for: Schema changes, Stored procedure deployments, Data migration scripts and Support version control integration
• Create reusable administrative scripts for: Multi-database updates, Password rotation, Security audits and Cross-environment validation

Required Skills

• 7+ years of experience with SQL Database Administration & Operations
• 3+ years of experience with Performance Tuning & Optimization
• 3+ years of experience with Data Integrity & Governance Support
• 3+ years of experience with Data Warehouse Architecture & Reporting Support
• 3+ years of experience with Security & Compliance
• 3+ years of experience with Automation & DevOps Support
• Preferred / Nice-to-Have Skills
• Experience in judicial, government, or public sector environments
• Power BI backend optimization
• .NET application data access patterns
• Always On Availability Groups
• Azure DevOps
• Experience cleaning legacy data structures across multiple counties or jurisdictions

Others

• Authorized work statuses accepted: U.S. Citizen, Green Card holder, and H‑4 EAD
• Candidate location: Candidate must be a CURRENT SC resident. No relocation allowed.

Pay: $76.00 - $80.00 per hour

Work Location: Hybrid remote in Columbia, SC 29201