Principal Engineer - DBA

As part of this transformation, NSS and NES have joined to form a new organisation: Public Services Delivery Scotland (PSD Scotland). This new organisation will play a pivotal role in supporting the renewal and ensuring the long-term sustainability of health and care services across Scotland.

About the Organisation: PSD Scotland unites expertise from NES and NSS in a way that will allow us to accelerate national programmes to support the NHS to deliver better care, now and in the future.

We support staff with education and training, provide the tools and data that improve services, and run vital national functions such as procurement, logistics and blood, tissue and cell services., As part of the IT Strategic Business Unit, PSD Scotland Infrastructure services has direct responsibility for over 250 different applications (deployed both on-premises in one of two data centres, and in the public cloud) and for processing over 100 million records per year. The PSD Scotland Infrastructure Server team is responsible for maintaining and supporting existing platforms as well as researching emerging technologies and recommending future direction. They are also involved in a number of major IT projects aimed at optimising the use of IT infrastructure.

The team is split into 4 areas of expertise - Microsoft, Unix, Cloud and Oracle Database Admin.

An opportunity has become available within our DBA team for an experienced professional to work within the Server team as one of 3 Oracle and 2 SQL Server database administrators with responsibility for the support and maintenance of over 80 production and around 150 test and development databases.

PSD Scotland has various implementations of Oracle database, from version 11g up to 19c. These are hosted on a variety of physical and virtual platforms, running various flavours of linux and solaris, including an Exadata cluster in Oracle's OCI cloud platform. SQL Server databases are hosted on a SQL Server 19 HA cluster running on windows 2022.

PSD Scotland also manages a large Azure subscription with SQL Server SaaS deployments. There are currently no Oracle databases deployed in Azure, but this is likely to change in the near future. Candidates should have experience of supporting Oracle databases from version 11.2 onwards and/or SQL Server 2019.

Tasks will include:

• Performing routine administration tasks including installing software; creating and upgrading databases; managing users and security; database backup and recovery; monitoring and performance tuning
• Providing technical support to users throughout the PSD Scotland. Resolve problems within an agreed timescale by adopting an analytical approach designed to identify the cause of any perceived problem, resolve it and avoid a future recurrence.
• Managing the progression of multiple tasks where unexpected events may necessitate the switch of tasks without warning, e.g. virus attack or systems failure.
• Ensuring departmental standard operating procedures (SOPs) and standards are followed.
• Liaison with business users to gather information on technical requirements or issues. Provide technical advice ensuring technical issues are clearly explained and understood.
• Keeping up-to-date with new and emerging technologies by undertaking research and development as required.
• Working closely with colleagues within the IT department and with third party suppliers to make the best use of available resources and optimise service delivery ensuring two-way communication and understanding of technical issues. The SBU works within an ITIL service management framework.

The IM & T Principal Engineer should be educated to degree level or equivalent. The post holder should have an appreciation of the business requirements of PSD Scotland and combine this knowledge with finely tuned customer relation skills.

Our benefits package includes pension scheme, comprehensive range of work life balance policies, occupational health services, learning resource centres and discounted leisure, financial and shopping benefits. HR Benefits Brochure.

Public Services Delivery Scotland is a national organisation and, as an anchor institution, it is our ambition to be a diverse and inclusive organisation where everyone feels welcome. We recognise that flexible working creates an inclusive workplace where employees can thrive and feel confident about their ability to balance their personal and professional responsibilities. This is supported through Once for Scotland flexible working policies. PSD Scotland has made a long-term commitment to staff health and well-being and offers many learning and development opportunities to support and improve our approaches to diversity, inclusion and mental health in the workplace. There are a number of equality staff networks in place which all staff are welcome to join. We are also an equal opportunities employer and as such guarantee to interview all disabled applicants who meet the minimum criteria for our vacancies. As an accredited Disability Confident Leader, it