Senior MySQL Database Administrator

Title: Senior MySQL Database Administrator Location: Cape Town

About impact.com: impact.com is the world’s leading commerce partnership marketing platform, transforming the way businesses grow by enabling them to discover, manage, and scale partnerships across the entire customer journey. From affiliates and influencers to content publishers, brand ambassadors, and customer advocates, impact.com empowers brands to drive trusted, performance-based growth through authentic relationships. Its award-winning products - Performance (affiliate), Creator (influencer), and Advocate (customer referral) - unify every type of partner into one integrated platform. As consumers increasingly rely on recommendations from people and communities they trust, impact.com helps brands show up where it matters most. Today, over 5,000 global brands - including Walmart, Uber, Shopify, Lenovo, L’Oréal, and Fanatics - rely on impact.com to power more than 350,000 partnerships that deliver measurable business results.

Your Role at impact.com: We are seeking an experienced Senior MySQL Database Administrator to manage and optimize our large-scale, mission-critical database infrastructure. You will lead the administration, performance tuning, high-availability, and disaster recovery operations of our diverse MySQL ecosystem running across Google Cloud and AWS environments. This role requires deep expertise in Percona Server for MySQL, advanced query optimization, infrastructure-as-code, and modern DevOps practices.

As a Senior MySQL Database Administrator at impact.com, you will work with the latest technologies that enable near-real time processing of datasets in the Terabytes range and the exciting challenges that come with working with massive amounts of data. You will have the freedom to experiment with the latest technologies with the ultimate goal of scaling our systems linearly. If you have great ideas and like to think outside the box, we will encourage it and support you, giving you the tools to be successful as we scale Impact. At impact.com, your career path is yours to shape, as we encourage cross training into other technologies.

What You'll Do:

• Manage and maintain Percona Server for MySQL (5.7, 8.0, 8.4 and later versions) across production, staging, and development environments, including multi-terabyte instances
• Design and implement ProxySQL configurations for high availability, load balancing, query routing, and connection pooling at scale
• Manage MySQL and PostgreSQL topology using GitHub Orchestrator, including automated failover and orchestration workflows
• Design, implement, and maintain backup and disaster recovery strategies using XtraBackup, binary log replication, and point-in-time recovery (PITR) procedures
• Perform comprehensive SQL query analysis and optimization using pt-query-digest, EXPLAIN analysis, and query profiling to identify bottlenecks and improve performance
• Optimize and tune database performance, including InnoDB configuration, buffer pool settings, query execution plans, and index strategies for workload efficiency
• Administer secondary database engines (ClickHouse, Cloud SQL, RDS MySQL, Aurora, SingleStore) and evaluate their optimal use cases within our architecture
• Implement and maintain Infrastructure-as-Code using Terraform and Puppet for database infrastructure provisioning and configuration management
• Architect and manage multi-region/multi-cloud database deployments across Google Cloud and AWS, balancing cost, latency, and resilience requirements
• Develop and execute runbooks for common database operational procedures, incident response, and disaster recovery scenarios
• Monitor database health using Percona Monitoring and Management (PMM), custom alerting, and observability tools; investigate and resolve performance degradation
• Manage database access controls, user provisioning, privilege auditing, and security hardening in compliance with principle of least privilege
• Conduct capacity planning and growth projections based on usage trends, workload analysis, and business requirements
• Lead database upgrade initiatives, testing, planning, and execution while minimizing downtime using automated tooling and blue-green deployment strategies
• Collaborate with application engineering teams to optimize data models, query patterns, and integration with database infrastructure
• Mentor junior DBAs and engineers on database best practices, troubleshooting methodologies, and operational excellence

Preferred Qualifications:

• Bachelor's degree in mathematics, statistics, economics, computer science or a related field, or relevant professional experience
• Minimum 5+ years’ experience as a production Database Administrator
• 5+ years experience with MySQL / Percona Server 5.7, 8.x / CloudSQL / AWS RDS
• Experience with ProxySQL 2.x, 3.x / Orchestrator, Percona XtraBackup
• 5+ years of experience in writing Linux shell scripts, perl scripts, Python etc.
• Experience with Postgres
• Experience with ClickHouse or other analytical database engines
• Familiarity with change data capture (CDC) technologies like Debezium and streaming platforms like Kafka
• Experience managing PostgreSQL infrastructure and knowledge of database-agnostic best practices
• Knowledge of database security topics: encryption at rest/in transit, authentication/authorization, audit logging
• Experience with GitHub Orchestrator or similar MySQL topology orchestration tools
• Exposure to MySQL kernel source code or internal mechanisms
• Previous experience mentoring DBAs or conducting technical training
• Certifications (Oracle MySQL, Percona, AWS Database Specialty) are a plus but not required

Technical Competencies:

• Percona Server for MySQL / Oracle MySQL (versions 5.7 – 8.4+)
• ProxySQL, connection pooling, and query routing
• XtraBackup, binary log replication, GTID, and point-in-time recovery
• Percona Monitoring and Management (PMM)
• Cloud platforms: Google Cloud (Compute Engine, Cloud SQL, Cloud Storage) and AWS (EC2, RDS, Aurora, S3)
• IaC tools: Terraform, Puppet
• Percona Toolkit (pt-query-digest, pt-online-schema-change, pt-duplicate-key-checker, et al.)
• Linux/Unix system administration and performance tuning
• Scripting/Automation: Bash, Python, or similar languages
• Version control: Git/GitHub
• ClickHouse, MongoDB, SingleStore (secondary skills)

Soft Skills and Attributes:

• Team Leader
• Problem-solving mindset with ability to analyze complex, multi-layered issues systematically
• Ownership mentality; comfort with being on-call and responding to critical incidents
• Continuous learner; ability to stay current with rapidly evolving database technology and industry practices
• Excellent written and verbal communication; ability to document decisions, procedures, and architectural choices
• Collaboration across engineering teams; ability to influence without authority
• Attention to detail and commitment to operational excellence and data integrity

Benefits and Perks: At impact.com, we believe that when you’re happy and fulfilled, you do your best work. That’s why we’ve built a benefits package that supports your well-being, growth, and work-life balance.

Flexible Working: Our Responsible PTO policy means you can take the time off you need to rest and recharge. We're committed to a positive work-life balance and provide a flexible environment that allows you to be happy and fulfilled in both your career and your personal life.

Health and Wellness: Your well-being is a priority. Our mental health and wellness benefit includes up to 12 fully covered therapy/coaching sessions per year, with additional dependent coverage. We also offer a monthly gym reimbursement policy to support your physical health.

A Stake in Our Growth: We offer Restricted Stock Units (RSUs) as part of our total compensation, giving you a stake in the company's growth with a 3-year vesting schedule, pending Board approval.

Investing in Your Growth: We’re committed to your continuous learning. Take advantage of our free Coursera subscription and our PXA courses.

Parental Support: We offer a generous parental leave policy, 26 weeks of fully paid leave for the primary caregiver and 13 weeks fully paid leave for the secondary caregiver.

Technology Financial Support: We provide a technology stipend to help you set up your home office and a monthly allowance to cover your internet expenses

impact.com is proud to be an equal opportunity workplace. All employees and applicants for employment shall be given fair treatment and equal employment opportunity regardless of their race, ethnicity or ancestry, color or caste, religion or belief, age, sex (including gender identity, gender reassignment, sexual orientation, pregnancy/maternity), national origin, weight, neurodivergence, disability, marital and civil partnership status, caregiving status, veteran status, genetic information, political affiliation, or other prohibited non-merit factors.