Howden is a global insurance group with employee ownership at its heart. Together, we have pushed the boundaries of insurance. We are united by a shared passion and no-limits mindset, and our strength lies in our ability to collaborate as a powerful international team comprised of 24,000 employees spanning over 56 countries.
People join Howden for many different reasons, but they stay for the same one: our culture. It’s what sets us apart, and the reason our employees have been turning down headhunters for years. Whatever your priorities – work / life balance, career progression, sustainability, volunteering – you’ll find like-minded people driving change at Howden.
The Role
We are looking for a Senior Database Platform Engineer to own the reliability, performance, security and evolution of our database platforms.
This is not a traditional ticket-driven DBA role. While you'll be responsible for keeping our SQL Server and Azure SQL estate healthy, secure and performant, you'll also help modernise our data platforms and support our transition towards PostgreSQL, cloud-native database services and modern lakehouse architectures.
This is a hands-on engineering role. You'll be troubleshooting performance issues, validating recovery strategies, automating operational processes, improving observability and helping shape the future of our database estate.
You will act as the team's database SME, working closely with Platform Engineers, Data Engineers and Operations teams to ensure critical data services remain resilient, scalable and fit for future needs.
What You'll Actually Do
Database Engineering & Operations (40%)
Own the operational health, availability and performance of SQL Server and Azure SQL platforms
Provision, configure and maintain production and non-production database environments
Plan and execute upgrades, patching and platform lifecycle activities
Diagnose and resolve database performance issues across infrastructure, workloads and application interactions
Establish and maintain database operational standards and engineering practices
Manage platform capacity, utilisation and performance forecasting
Ensure critical database platforms remain secure, resilient and operationally supportable
Resilience, Recovery & Reliability (25%)
Design, implement and validate backup, recovery and disaster recovery capabilities
Own restore testing and recovery readiness across critical platforms
Support high availability solutions and service resilience initiatives
Implement proactive monitoring, alerting and observability for database services
Participate in incident response, problem management and post-incident reviews
Drive continual improvement through automation, root cause analysis and operational learning
Reduce operational toil through self-healing and automation where practical
Database Modernisation (15%)
Support the evolution of the database estate towards PostgreSQL and modern cloud-native database services
Define and improve database deployment, configuration and operational standards
Contribute to migration and modernisation initiatives across legacy database platforms
Help reduce technical debt through platform simplification and standardisation
Evaluate new database technologies and operating models where they create business value
Data Platform Integration (10%)
Support integration between database platforms, Databricks and analytics services
Work alongside Data Engineers to optimise data movement and workload performance
Contribute database expertise to modern data platform initiatives
Help ensure database services can support emerging analytics and AI workloads
Security, Governance & Compliance (10%)
Implement and maintain role-based access controls and database security standards
Support audit, compliance and governance activities
Manage database access processes and periodic reviews
Ensure database services align with organisational security and operational policies
Produce operational evidence and documentation where required for regulatory and audit purposes
What We Need From You
Required
5+ years database engineering or DBA experience supporting production platforms
Strong SQL Server expertise including administration, performance tuning, troubleshooting and optimisation
Experience with Azure SQL and cloud-hosted database services
High Availability and Disaster Recovery experience including backup, restore and recovery planning
Experience managing business-critical production services
Strong troubleshooting skills across database, infrastructure and application interactions
Monitoring and observability experience within enterprise environments
Automation experience using PowerShell, Python or similar scripting languages
Strong understanding of database security, access control and governance
Experience working within structured incident, problem and change management processes
Strongly Preferred
PostgreSQL administration and engineering experience
Experience supporting enterprise data warehouse environments
Databricks administration or integration experience
Azure cloud platform experience
Infrastructure-as-Code familiarity (Terraform or Bicep)
Experience with modern monitoring and observability platforms
Experience supporting cloud migration or database modernisation programmes
Knowledge of lakehouse architectures and modern analytics platforms
What Actually Matters
Reliability mindset – you understand databases are critical infrastructure and treat them accordingly
Operational excellence – prevention is always better than firefighting
Pragmatism over purity – you choose the right solution, not the fashionable one
Automation-first thinking – eliminate repetitive manual work wherever possible
Continuous improvement – you leave systems better than you found them
Documentation discipline – knowledge should be shared, not hidden
Collaboration skills – you work effectively across engineering, operations and data teams
Ownership mentality – you see problems through to resolution
What We Offer
Actual flexibility: Remote-first with occasional travel to London for planning sessions, workshops and team events. We care about outcomes, not attendance.
Real learning budget: Support for training, certifications and conferences that improve both your expertise and our platforms.
Interesting technical challenges: Opportunities to work across SQL Server, Azure SQL, PostgreSQL, Databricks, modern data platforms and emerging AI-enabled services.
Grown-up engineering culture:
Automation is encouraged and expected
Technical decisions are driven by evidence and context
Documentation matters
Blameless post-mortems when things go wrong
Operational excellence is valued as highly as new feature delivery
We continuously invest in platform improvement and technical debt reduction
Add the usual stuff here: How to apply, interview process.
A career that you define. At Howden, we value diversity – there is no one Howden type. Instead, we’re looking for individuals who share the same values as us:
Our successes have all come from someone brave enough to try something new
We support each other in the small everyday moments and the bigger challenges
We are determined to make a positive difference at work and beyond
We're committed to providing reasonable accommodations at Howden to ensure that our positions align well with your needs. Besides the usual adjustments such as software, IT, and office setups, we can also accommodate other changes such as flexible hours* or hybrid working*.
If you're excited by this role but have some doubts about whether it’s the right fit for you, send us your application – if your profile fits the role’s criteria, we will be in touch to assist in helping to get you set up with any reasonable adjustments you may require.
*Not all positions can accommodate changes to working hours or locations. Reach out to your Recruitment Partner if you want to know more.
PermanentHowden Re London, England Office
London, United Kingdom
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