Database and Application Support Engineer – Journeyman

This is a fully remote position, open to applicants in Illinois.

📋 Description

• Oversee and enhance the availability, performance, health, and recoverability of enterprise databases and applications.

• Analyze operational alerts, service disruptions, database errors, application failures, performance issues, and user-reported problems.

• Identify database availability challenges, failed services, connection issues, authentication errors, resource limitations, and performance bottlenecks.

• Examine application dependencies across databases, servers, services, middleware, APIs, certificates, networks, cloud platforms, storage, and external interfaces.

• Resolve issues related to database listeners, connection strings, connection pools, ports, drivers, service accounts, permissions, and network pathways.

• Review logs from databases, applications, middleware, operating systems, web servers, APIs, and networks to pinpoint faults.

• Utilize monitoring data, alerts, logs, metrics, and traces to detect service interruptions.

• Assist in the diagnosis and management of certificate installation, renewal, replacement, validation, and troubleshooting.

• Address REST, SOAP, API gateway, endpoint, authentication, authorization, payload, timeout, and connectivity challenges.

• Engage in Outage Response Team initiatives and conduct technical triage.

• Aid in mitigation, recovery efforts, temporary workarounds, incident timelines, root-cause analysis, and tracking of corrective actions.

• Collaborate with Task 4 enterprise IT operations staff regarding infrastructure, server, network, cloud, storage, certificate, identity, and platform matters.

• Work with Task 7 software teams on application code reviews, defect resolutions, build modifications, software releases, and production validation.

• Provide logs, traces, reproduction steps, configuration details, and impact assessments to software teams.

• Assist with upgrades and refreshes of databases, applications, middleware, servers, appliances, and components.

• Implement plans, procedures for upgrades, testing, validation, rollback procedures, and outage contingencies.

• Support backup, restoration, replication, failover, failback, high availability, and disaster recovery tasks.

• Validate recovery of databases and applications and ensure end-to-end transaction paths are intact after outages, maintenance, migrations, restorations, or upgrades.

• Participate in capacity, performance, availability, resource utilization, vulnerability remediation, and security control activities.

• Adhere to processes related to incidents, problems, changes, configurations, releases, availability, and service continuity.

• Maintain dependency diagrams, interface records, certificate inventories, configuration documentation, recovery procedures, and troubleshooting manuals.

• Identify recurring problems, dependency risks, outdated components, certificate vulnerabilities, and potential failure points.

⛳️ Requirements

• Active Secret clearance or higher.

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, or a related field.

• At least 6 years of relevant experience in database support, application support, systems engineering, production operations, or enterprise IT.

• Proven experience in diagnosing database availability, application dependencies, connection failures, services, certificates, and API-related outages.

• Willingness to support after-hours outages, deployments, maintenance windows, upgrades, and recovery tasks as necessary.

• Preferred: experience in supporting enterprise databases and applications within a federal or Department of Defense context.

• Preferred: familiarity with Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle Database, PostgreSQL, MySQL, AWS relational database services, Azure SQL, or similar platforms.

• Preferred: experience with database clustering, replication, backup, restoration, failover, high availability, and disaster recovery.

• Preferred: experience in supporting application servers, middleware, web servers, integration platforms, schedulers, and background services.

• Preferred: experience with Microsoft Internet Information Services, Apache, Tomcat, WebLogic, JBoss, .NET, Java, or equivalent technologies.

• Preferred: experience troubleshooting REST, SOAP, API gateway, authentication, authorization, payload, timeout, and endpoint connectivity challenges.

• Preferred: experience managing TLS certificates, trust stores, keystores, certificate bindings, and Public Key Infrastructure dependencies.

• Preferred: familiarity with application performance monitoring, database monitoring, logging, tracing, observability, and event management tools.

• Preferred: experience handling production outages, incident bridges, service restoration, root-cause analysis, and tracking corrective actions.

• Preferred: experience coordinating operational matters among infrastructure engineers, database administrators, application owners, and software development teams.

• Preferred: experience in gathering logs, traces, reproduction steps, technical findings, and impact data for code-level troubleshooting.

• Preferred: experience validating component upgrades, software releases, database changes, application fixes, and recovery procedures.

• Preferred: experience applying DISA STIGs and supporting DoD RMF, ATO, IAVA, CND Directive, vulnerability remediation, and POA&M requirements.

• Preferred: experience using ServiceNow or a similar ITSM platform for incident, problem, change, configuration, and release management.

• Preferred: knowledge of PowerShell, Python, SQL, Bash, or other scripting and query languages utilized for diagnostics and automation.

• Preferred: certifications in database, cloud, middleware, application servers, or ITIL.

• Strong skills in troubleshooting, analysis, documentation, communication, and team collaboration.

🏝️ Benefits

• Remote work arrangement.

• Support for after-hours work related to outages, deployments, maintenance windows, upgrades, and recovery activities.

• Opportunity to contribute to a federal government contract.

• Equal employment opportunity and affirmative action protections.