Senior SQL Server DBA at Centrica, Stockport/Remote, 6 Months, £Day Rate

Description

Join us, be part of more.

We’re so much more than an energy company. We’re a family of brands revolutionising how we power the planet. We're energisers. One team of 21,000 colleagues that's energising a greener, fairer future by creating an energy system that doesn’t rely on fossil fuels, whilst living our powerful commitment to igniting positive change in our communities. Here, you can find more purpose, more passion, and more potential. That’s why working here is #MoreThanACareer. We do energy differently - we do it all. We make it, store it, move it, sell it, and mend it.

About your team:

At PH Jones, our mission is to mend it.

Our teams have been at the heart of communities for over 50 years. Partnering with local authorities and associations, we support social housing across the UK – installing, upgrading and repairing heating and electrical systems. But we’re not just living off our legacy. We’re on a mission to make the UK’s social housing sector greener and more energy efficient.

Senior SQL Server DBA Contractor (Day Rate) 6 months Hybrid (Stockport)

PH Jones is looking for an experienced Senior SQL Server DBA to join our IS function on a contract basis. If you thrive on stabilising high-availability SQL estates, unpicking performance issues, and leaving teams with clear runbooks and measurable improvements, we’d like to hear from you.

Contract details

Term: 6 months (day rate) Working pattern: hybrid (home + Stockport office as required) Hours: 40 per week, worked between 08:00-18:00 Mon-Fri Engagement: via our preferred agency partner

You’ll be brought in to improve resilience, performance and operational maturity across a busy SQL Server estate, working closely with Ops and delivery teams.

Overview:

Working as an Senior SQL Server DBA with PH Jones , your key accountabilities will be but are not limited to:

• Diagnose and remediate HA issues: quorum, witness migration, AOAG configuration and validation.
• Design and implement batching, lock‑order alignment, and indexing/partitioning to stabilise maintenance jobs.
• Tune high‑usage queries and stored procedures for Pilot/PilotArchive/PilotDocumentManagement; manage plan stability.
• Establish observability: XE deadlock capture, blocked process reports, Query Store baselines and dashboards.
• Harden backup/restore/DR; create and socialise detailed runbooks; coordinate failover tests with Ops.
• Support Rise features: schema reviews, migration scripts, performance advice; collaborate with .NET/Blazor teams.
• Document changes and adhere to change control (ServiceNow) and DevOps workflows (Azure DevOps).

The Person

Must have extensive demonstratable experience in the following:

• Expertise with SQL Server 2014–2022 engine internals, T‑SQL optimisation, indexing/partitioning, isolation & lock management.
• Windows Failover Clustering & Always On Availability Groups (quorum, witness, listeners, multi‑instance memory configuration).
• Extended Events, Query Store, deadlock graph analysis, parameter sniffing mitigation, plan stability techniques.
• Design for high‑throughput deletes/archiving: batching, sargable predicates, cascade/trigger management.
• Storage & I/O fundamentals for SQL (latency targets, RAID layouts; MDF/NDF vs LDF placement).
• SSIS/ETL patterns; experience with Azure SQL Managed Instance (desirable).
• Governance & tooling: ServiceNow change/incident, Azure DevOps, SharePoint documentation.