This is a full-time, on-site opening for a Senior MySQL Database Administrator based in Guindy, Chennai. The company runs a production database environment that has grown past the point where ad-hoc fixes are enough, and they need someone senior enough to own its reliability directly rather than patching issues as complaints come in.
The systems in question support several internal applications and a customer-facing platform that runs continuously, so downtime isn't something that can wait until the next business day. Previous growth in transaction volume has already exposed a few weak points in indexing and query design, and part of this role involves working through that backlog methodically over the first several months rather than firefighting indefinitely.
What the role covers
- Design and maintain database structures that hold up as data volume and query load grow
- Optimize slow or resource-heavy queries so application performance stays consistent under load
- Manage backup schedules and data security practices across production systems
- Monitor system health continuously and catch reliability issues before they turn into outages
- Plan and execute maintenance windows for upgrades, schema migrations, and capacity changes with minimal disruption to live traffic
Someone doing this job well spends much of the week reading query execution plans and index usage reports, not just responding to alerts. A database that's quietly well-tuned rarely gets noticed, which is usually the sign the person running it is doing their job.
Background and experience
The minimum academic bar for this position is a bachelor's degree, with computer science, IT, or a closely related discipline being the usual path in. Beyond that, the role calls for 66 months of hands-on experience administering production database systems, ideally with a track record that includes design work as well as day-to-day operations, not just operational support. Employers hiring at this level typically look for someone who's already made judgment calls under pressure during a real incident, not only someone who's read about how to.
Practical experience with database design shows up early in the interview process here. Candidates are usually asked to walk through a schema they've built from scratch, including the trade-offs they weighed around normalization, indexing strategy, and how they anticipated future query patterns. Query optimization gets tested the same way, through an actual slow query rather than a general knowledge question, since the two skills tend to separate candidates far more clearly than a resume can.
Naukri Mitra is running this search for a company whose engineering team sits entirely in Chennai, so the role reports to a local manager rather than a distributed one.
Technical skills
The role needs solid, current command of MySQL and SQL; comfort configuring and troubleshooting replication setups; and practical experience with backup and recovery procedures that have been tested, not just documented. Performance tuning is a core part of the job, not an occasional task, so query-level optimization should be something the candidate does regularly, not something they learned once and haven't touched since.
Skills that help beyond the basics
A few things aren't required but strengthen an application. Experience with cloud-managed MySQL services such as Amazon RDS or Aurora is useful if the company eventually shifts some workloads off self-managed infrastructure. Familiarity with diagnostic tools like the Percona Toolkit or pt-query-digest speeds up troubleshooting considerably. Some scripting ability in Bash or Python helps automate routine maintenance tasks, and prior exposure to high-availability setups such as Galera Cluster or MySQL Group Replication is a genuine plus for anyone who's had to keep a database running through a node failure.
Certifications aren't a filter here one way or the other. An Oracle MySQL Database Administrator certification can round out an application, but candidates who can demonstrate equivalent skills through project work are evaluated on the same footing as someone holding the certificate.
Pay and benefits
The role pays up to ₹1,19,000 a month, which sits toward the higher end of current MySQL database administrator salary levels in Chennai for a senior, on-site position. Compensation is reviewed annually against internal performance metrics rather than fixed to a rigid band, so it can move over time based on how the role plays out.
- Health insurance coverage
- Paid time off
- Performance-linked bonuses tied to system uptime and delivery targets
- On-site cafeteria facilities
- Cab or commute support for the Guindy office
The commute support is worth mentioning on its own. Guindy sees heavy traffic during peak hours, and a cab option removes one of the most common friction points for people commuting from further parts of the city.
Working with the team
This role reports to the head of engineering and sits in regular contact with the application development team, since a sluggish query usually shows up in their code first before anyone traces it back down to the database layer. Because the position is senior, there's an expectation of independent decision-making around schema changes and maintenance windows rather than needing sign-off for every routine adjustment. Larger architectural decisions, like moving to a new replication topology, still go through a joint review with engineering leadership before implementation.
The office in Guindy runs standard business hours, with occasional after-hours work required for planned maintenance or upgrades that can't happen while the system is under load. That's a normal part of database administration at this level rather than something unusual to this particular employer.
A small on-call rotation covers weekends and holidays, shared across the database team so no single person carries it alone every cycle. New hires typically join that rotation after their first couple of months once they've had time to get familiar with the system's specific quirks, backup schedules, and past incident history.
Applying
Candidates should send a resume that clearly lays out their hands-on experience with production MySQL environments, including the scale of the systems they've managed and any incidents they've resolved directly. A technical conversation covering real scenarios, such as diagnosing a slow query or handling a failed replication node, forms part of the process before an offer is extended. As this is strictly an on-site role in Chennai, applicants should be based in, or willing to relocate to, the city before applying.
