Technical Delivery Manager – Database

Overview

You will lead Planet’s in-house Database Pod, owning the end-to-end database strategy, standards, and operations across AWS, Azure, and on-prem. You’ll build and mentor the DBA team, champion automation and FinOps, and drive modernisation and secure, scalable data platforms. The role combines senior design authority with hands-on leadership to support a PCI DSS–regulated environment. You’ll partner with cross-functional teams to translate business needs into resilient, cost-conscious database solutions. This is a chance to shape Planet’s data capabilities at scale.

Responsibilities

• Own strategy, architecture, standards, and roadmap for the database estate across cloud and on-prem
• Lead, build, and mentor the in-house DBA pod and uplift skills
• Embed FinOps to optimise licensing and cloud spend
• Drive database migration, modernisation, and technical-debt reduction
• Define resilience standards for HA/DR, backup, recovery, and RTO/RPO
• Own security posture and PCI DSS compliance, liaising with Security & Compliance
• Champion automation and infrastructure-as-code (Terraform, CI/CD) for database changes
• Govern performance, capacity planning, and forecasting
• Oversee governance, SLAs, and vendor relationships (licensing, support)
• Stakeholder engagement with application, platform, security, and infra teams
• Maintain SOPs, runbooks, and architecture documentation for audit readiness

Key requirements

• Proven leadership of database/DBA teams at lead/principal/director level
• Deep expertise across Microsoft SQL Server and Oracle; MySQL/PostgreSQL and NoSQL exposure
• Strong cloud DB experience on AWS and Azure (Azure SQL, RDS/Aurora) and self-hosted IaaS databases
• Track record in database strategy, standards, and hybrid estate architecture
• Enterprise-scale HA/DR, backup/recovery, and business-continuity design (RTO/RPO)
• FinOps, cost-optimisation and capacity planning for cloud
• Database security and regulatory compliance in payments/regulatory environments (PCI DSS)
• Automation and IaC mindset (Terraform, CI/CD, database DevOps)
• Experience leading large-scale migration/modernisation from on-prem to cloud
• Excellent communication and stakeholder management, building high-performing teams

• excellent communication
• stakeholder management
• leadership
• Microsoft SQL Server
• Oracle
• MySQL

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