Azure SQL MI Engineer

Salary: $117000 - 155000 per year Requirements: We need at least 5 years of SQL Server administration experience. We need at least 3 years of hands-on Azure SQL Managed Instance administration experience. We require Azure cloud experience. We value excellent communication and customer-facing skills. You must be able to work independently during shift-based coverage. You should have strong incident management and problem-solving abilities. You need the confidence to lead technical conversations during critical outages. You should be able to prepare root cause analyses and operational reports. You must be willing to work a 24x7 rotational schedule, including weekends and holidays. You must participate in on-call support and major incident response activities. You need the ability to support global customers across multiple time zones. We expect strong hands-on experience with Azure SQL Managed Instance, Azure Virtual Networks, Private Endpoints, NSGs, Route Tables, Azure Monitor, Log Analytics, Azure Backup, Azure Key Vault, and Azure Storage. We expect solid expertise in the SQL Server engine, query tuning, index management, backup and recovery, Always On concepts, HA/DR design, and capacity planning. You should have expert-level troubleshooting skills across SQL Server, Azure infrastructure, networking, performance issues, and storage bottlenecks. Preferred: Microsoft Certified: Azure Database Administrator Associate (DP-300). Preferred: Microsoft Certified: Azure Administrator Associate (AZ-104). Preferred: Microsoft Certified: Azure Solutions Architect Expert (AZ-305). Preferred: experience supporting large-scale enterprise production environments. Preferred: experience in ITIL-based support organizations. Nice to have: experience with Azure Arc-enabled SQL Server. Nice to have: experience with Azure SQL Database and Azure Synapse. Nice to have: familiarity with Azure Landing Zones and enterprise-scale Azure environments. Nice to have: exposure to monitoring tools such as Instana, Dynatrace, Grafana, or Azure Managed Prometheus. Responsibilities: We administer, provision, configure, maintain, patch, and upgrade Azure SQL Managed Instances across multiple subscriptions and regions. We manage sizing, scaling, storage, capacity planning, backups, restores, security reviews, and routine maintenance. We support Azure SQL MI architecture, including virtual clusters, General Purpose and Business Critical tiers, high availability and failover, zone redundancy, instance pools, storage, networking, and VNet integration. We assist with SQL Server to Azure SQL MI migrations and review deployment architectures. We monitor and improve performance, investigating slow queries, blocking, indexing, execution plans, and resource constraints such as CPU, memory, storage, and I/O. We manage HA/DR solutions, including Auto-Failover Groups, Geo-Replication, point-in-time restore, long-term retention, backup and recovery strategies, and DR testing. We monitor environments with Azure Monitor, Log Analytics, Application Insights, and enterprise monitoring platforms. We handle incidents, service requests, problem management, root cause analysis, and major outage response. We troubleshoot connectivity, replication, performance, resource contention, and network-related issues. We implement and support Microsoft Entra ID, RBAC, TDE, Always Encrypted, auditing, threat detection, and vulnerability assessments. We develop automation using PowerShell, Azure CLI, and T-SQL, with preference for ARM, Bicep, or Terraform. We support infrastructure-as-code deployments and automate routine DBA and monitoring tasks. Technologies: ARM Architect Azure Cloud Dynatrace Grafana Instana Support ITIL Network PowerShell Prometheus RBAC SQL Security Terraform ASP.NET AI LESS More: We are Kforces client, supporting mission-critical Azure SQL Managed Instance environments in a remote role with global operational coverage. This position is part of a worldwide operations team and includes rotational shifts, on-call support, and incident response responsibilities. We offer comprehensive benefits to eligible employees, including medical, dental, and vision insurance, HSA, FSA, 401(k), and life, disability, and accidental death and dismemberment coverage. Salaried employees receive paid time off, and hourly employees may receive paid sick leave where required by law. This role is not eligible for bonuses, incentives, or commissions, and we are an equal opportunity employer committed to fair consideration for all qualified applicants. last updated 28 week of 2026