Senior Database Administrator - Virtual Bank

About Us:

Ascend Money is a leading fintech company providing innovative payment and financial services across 7 countries in the Southeast Asian Region. Established in 2013, Ascend Money became Thailand’s first fintech unicorn in 2021. Its flagship service TrueMoney today has become the most popular digital financial application that enables ease of payments and convenient financial lifestyle. TrueMoney’s extensive agent network as well as offline and online payment services also enable millions of users across the region to access innovative financial services, leading them to better lives.

Role Overview: As Senior Database Administrator (DBA), you'll be the person who keeps our mission-critical databases performing at their best, across a cloud-first environment that's modern by design. You won't be maintaining legacy systems; you'll be architecting the data foundation of a next-generation banking platform, working with managed cloud databases, automation tooling, and a team that genuinely cares about doing things right. If you're a DBA who's moved beyond break-fix support and wants to own database reliability at scale in a regulated, high-stakes, high-growth environment, this role was built for you.

Key Responsibilities:

• Own administration of cloud-managed databases on AWS, primarily RDS and Aurora (MySQL & PostgreSQL) across production and non-production environments.
• Manage on-premise and hybrid databases, including MySQL, PostgreSQL, and MSSQL.
• Perform patching, upgrades, and backup management with minimal downtime and full compliance.
• Lead performance tuning, query optimization, and capacity planning across all database tiers.
• Design and maintain high-availability solutions, replication, failover, and clustering to meet banking-grade SLAs.
• Proactively monitor database health and respond to issues before they become incidents.
• Build and maintain scripts (Python, Shell) to automate routine DBA tasks to reduce toil and increase consistency.
• Configure and manage monitoring and alerting tools (Grafana, Prometheus, CloudWatch, or equivalent).
• Contribute to infrastructure-as-code practices using Terraform or Ansible, where applicable.
• Ensure databases meet data security standards aligned with BOT regulations, PDPA, and ISO 27001.
• Partner closely with application, infrastructure, cloud, and security teams to deliver reliable end-to-end services.
• Participate in on-call rotation for incident response during non-business hours.

Qualifications:

• 4–5+ years as a DBA, ideally in banking, fintech, or a regulated industry.
• Strong hands-on experience with MySQL, PostgreSQL, and MSSQL.
• Solid experience with AWS RDS and Aurora, you know the difference between provisioned and serverless, and when to use each.
• Comfortable in Linux environments.
• Proven track record in HA design, performance tuning, backup/recovery, and database lifecycle management.
• Scripting skills in Python or Shell for automation.
• Familiarity with monitoring tools (Grafana, Prometheus, or similar).
• Good English and Thai communication skills.
• Nice to have - genuinely valued.
• Oracle experience is an advantage here.
• Oracle RAC or AlwaysOn experience.
• Cloud certifications (AWS Database Specialty or equivalent).
• Hands-on with Terraform or Ansible.
• Exposure to AI/ML data pipelines or analytical database workloads
• Flexible to work on-call shifts as required.
• Proactive, Can-do attitude and never-give-up mindset.