Hire Database Administrators

Why Hiring Database Administrators Requires Hands-On Evaluation

Database administration is one of the most consequential roles in IT. A skilled DBA keeps your applications fast, your data safe, and your business running. A weak one can cause outages that cost thousands per minute, corrupt production data, or create performance bottlenecks that degrade every system that depends on the database. Yet most recruiting processes treat DBA hiring like any other IT role — resume screening, behavioral questions, and a prayer.

The DBA landscape has also fragmented significantly. Modern organizations run a mix of relational databases (SQL Server, PostgreSQL, MySQL), NoSQL stores (MongoDB, DynamoDB, Cassandra), and increasingly cloud-managed database services. A candidate might be an expert at tuning SQL Server query plans but lack experience with PostgreSQL's MVCC model, or vice versa. Understanding which skills transfer and which don't requires technical depth that most recruiters lack.

Exodata's engineers evaluate DBA candidates through practical assessments that mirror real production scenarios. We test query optimization under realistic data volumes, backup and recovery planning, replication configuration, and the ability to diagnose performance degradation under pressure. You get DBAs who can maintain the heartbeat of your data infrastructure from their first week.

What Our Engineers Assess

Every database administrator candidate goes through a live technical assessment with our engineering team. Here's what we evaluate:

• Query performance tuning — execution plan analysis, index strategy, statistics management, and identifying slow query patterns
• High availability and disaster recovery — replication setup, failover configuration, backup strategies, and point-in-time recovery procedures
• Database design and modeling — normalization decisions, partitioning strategies, schema evolution, and data migration planning
• Security and access control — encryption at rest and in transit, role-based access, audit logging, and compliance requirements
• Capacity planning and scaling — storage growth forecasting, read replica strategies, connection pooling, and vertical vs. horizontal scaling decisions
• Automation and monitoring — alerting on key metrics (lock waits, replication lag, disk usage), automated maintenance tasks, and proactive health checks

Common Tech Stacks We Vet For

Engagement Options