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About Allica Bank

Allica is on a mission to become Britain’s most recommended business bank, by providing established SMEs – who represent more than a third of UK GDP – with lending, savings and current accounts, delivered through the latest proprietary technology alongside expert human relationships.

In Deloitte’s annual Technology Fast 50 rankings, Allica is the UK’s fastest growing technology firm - and the fastest-growing financial technology (fintech) firm ever. In 2022 Allica became one of the quickest UK fintech firms to reach profitability and closed a £100m Series C investment led by leading global technology investor TCV – investors in the likes of Netflix, Revolut and Spotify.

In the last year Allica received more than ten major financial services industry awards, including being named UK business bank of the year and global SME neobank of the year, alongside being named as one of the world’s 100 most promising fintech companies by leading global technology research firm CB Insights.

At the heart of Allica’s unique success is two things:

Firstly it’s our people, who are positive and passionate about making things happen, deeply care about our purpose and our customers, and are open minded and curious in finding practical ways to solve challenges. In our most recent employee survey 92% of our colleagues said that they enjoy working for Allica, and 88% recommend us as a place to work. But we’re not for everyone. Alongside survey responses describing our culture as rewarding, energetic and collaborative, you’ll also hear words like challenging and fast paced.

Secondly is our purpose which is to help established SMEs, one of the last underserved opportunities in fintech. Established SMEs are the backbone of local communities - representing over a third of our economy - yet have been largely neglected both by traditional high street banks and modern fintech providers. We’re here to change that. You will be playing a key role as we continue to build a bank dedicated to established SMEs, at what is a crucial time for them.

Department Description

The platform engineering team at Allica Bank plays a key role in the operation of the Bank and are responsible for all cloud, on premise, and desktop services. Our mission is to provide the best-in-class infrastructure services to support Allica. We live and breathe the Allica values and deliver services intelligently using automation, intelligence, and innovation.

Role Description

We are actively seeking an experienced Database Administrator to join our dynamic platform engineering team, playing a pivotal role in augmenting the data capabilities across our organization. This offshore position focuses on expanding our team's capacity, with a key emphasis on providing extensive database support and guidance, managing, and evolving our database systems. Your wealth of experience will contribute significantly to the continuous improvement of our platform capabilities, aligning with the bank’s organisational strategy.

Principal Accountabilities

As a key player in our offshore team, your principal accountabilities will involve proactively ensuring the availability and stability of our databases. This includes identifying and resolving issues, overseeing database operations, supporting maintenance activities, and conducting root cause analysis when necessary. Collaborating with platform and product teams, you will optimize database design and delivery, implementing automated solutions for database optimizations and DBA deliverables. Your impact analysis skills will be crucial, comprehending the implications of your work on both the database infrastructure systems and the overall business. Additionally, you will contribute to the improvement of database reliability through monitoring and alerting, fostering a culture of continuous improvement. Documentation of designs and instructional content on Confluence will be an integral part of your responsibilities, as well as responding to issues and support calls in accordance with relevant procedures, including security considerations.

Personal Attributes & Experience

We are seeking candidates with extensive experience in installing, configuring, and administering:

• MS SQL Server 2019 or equivalent
• SQL Managed Instances (Azure PaaS)
• T-SQL
• SQL Server Replication (Snapshot/Transactional), High Availability Groups, and Clusters.

Your troubleshooting skills should cover database integrity, performance, blocking, deadlocking, replication, log shipping, and connectivity issues. Proficiency in performance tuning, query optimization, and the use of tools such as Performance Monitor, SQL Profiler, and related monitoring and troubleshooting tools is highly valued.

The ability to detect and troubleshoot SQL Server-related resource contention issues, such as CPU, memory, I/O, and disk space, is crucial.

Your strong knowledge of backups, restores, recovery models, database shrink operations, DBCC commands, clustering, database mirroring, replication, and familiarity with indexes, index management, integrity checks, configuration, and patching will set you apart.

Additionally, experience with SQL Server tools (Profiler, SSMS, PerfMon, SSIS), SQL development skills, and a solid understanding of Windows server, security delegation, SPNs, and storage components are desired attributes for this role.