Job description
Role Overview
Database Administrator Trainee at Salla through the Tamheer Program, focused on production-scale database management and data platform operations.
Company Overview
You will work with the Data Platform team alongside experienced Database Administrators, Data Engineers, and Platform Engineers.
Role Purpose
To gain hands-on exposure to production-scale database environments while learning how databases are designed, monitored, optimized, secured, backed up, and recovered. This role combines practical training with real-world engineering experience in database administration, performance tuning, automation, and incident investigation.
Key Responsibilities
Database Performance & Optimization
- Write, review, and optimize SQL queries.
- Analyze database performance and identify slow or inefficient queries.
- Perform benchmarking and compare database configurations, queries, and technologies.
Monitoring & Health Management
- Support database monitoring, health checks, and capacity analysis.
- Investigate database incidents and help identify root causes.
- Support documentation of database standards, operational procedures, and best practices.
Backup, Recovery & High Availability
- Assist with database backup, recovery, replication, and high-availability activities.
- Learn how database changes are safely tested before being applied to critical environments.
Data Integrity & Validation
- Validate data accuracy, consistency, and integrity.
Automation & Technical Documentation
- Develop Python scripts to automate repetitive database and operational tasks.
- Prepare technical reports, performance findings, and recommendations.
Continuous Improvement
- Participate in continuous improvement initiatives across the Data Platform.
Qualifications & Experience
- Good foundational knowledge of SQL.
- The ability to write queries using joins, aggregations, filtering, and subqueries.
- Basic Python programming skills.
- Strong critical-thinking and problem-solving abilities.
- An analytical mindset and close attention to detail.
- The ability to compare results, benchmark solutions, and validate assumptions.
- A willingness to investigate problems instead of accepting results at face value.
- Good communication and documentation skills.
- A strong desire to learn database technologies and production engineering practices.
Skills & Competencies
- SQL query writing and optimization.
- Python programming.
- Critical thinking and problem-solving.
- Analytical and detail-oriented approach.
- Benchmarking and validation capabilities.
- Communication and documentation.
Additional Information
Preferred Knowledge
- Familiarity with MySQL, PostgreSQL, MongoDB, Redis, or similar database technologies.
- Basic knowledge of Linux and command-line tools.
- Understanding of database indexes, transactions, schemas, and data types.
- Exposure to Git, APIs, cloud platforms, or container technologies.
- Experience working on academic, personal, or graduation projects involving data or automation.
Learning Outcomes
You will have the opportunity to learn how enterprise databases operate at scale, database performance tuning and query optimization, backup recovery replication and disaster-recovery concepts, database security and access-management practices, monitoring alerting and incident investigation, Python-based database automation, safe change-management practices for production environments, and how to think and operate like a Database Reliability Engineer.
What Success Looks Like
You will thrive in this role if you are curious about how systems work internally, enjoy investigating difficult technical problems, pay attention to small details that others may overlook, are comfortable asking questions and learning from feedback, take ownership of your work and verify your results, see challenges as opportunities to learn and improve, and want to build a career in databases, cloud data platforms, or reliability engineering.
Program Approach
You will not be expected to know everything from day one. You will receive guidance, practical experience, and opportunities to work with experienced engineers. The program will challenge you to think critically, research independently, test your ideas, and gradually take ownership of meaningful technical tasks.