SQL Server Performance & Data Warehouse Consultant
The Data Platform team is seeking an experienced SQL Server Performance & Data Warehouse Consultant to lead a comprehensive performance, capacity and storage optimisation programme for a large-scale, on-premises Microsoft SQL Server estate. The main focus will be an 80 TB SQL Server 2022 Data Warehouse platform.
Working closely with the Data Engineering team, the consultant will undertake a comprehensive technical assessment of the existing platforms, identify performance, storage and capacity constraints, determine their root causes, and implement agreed improvements that deliver measurable gains in performance, scalability, operational resilience and long-term maintainability.
The consultant will be expected to investigate performance holistically across the entire technology stack, recognising that enterprise database performance challenges frequently originate outside of the SQL Server engine. This includes the operating system, virtualisation platform, compute, storage, SAN, networking and associated infrastructure, requiring the ability to identify and resolve bottlenecks wherever they exist.
The engagement will conclude with a prioritised remediation roadmap, comprehensive technical documentation and knowledge transfer to enable the Data Engineering team to confidently support and evolve the SQL Server estate.
- Review database architecture, storage configuration, filegroup design and maintenance strategies.
- Analyse workload characteristics to identify performance, storage and capacity constraints.
- Develop and implement sustainable strategies for database growth, storage optimisation and capacity management.
- Optimise query performance through execution plan analysis, indexing strategies, statistics management and workload tuning.
- Diagnose complex SQL Server performance issues including parameter sensitivity, cardinality estimation, blocking, deadlocking, concurrency, memory grants, TempDB contention, parallelism and execution plan instability.
- Assess opportunities to leverage SQL Server 2022 capabilities including Query Store, Intelligent Query Processing, Query Store Hints, Parameter Sensitive Plan optimisation, partitioning, compression and columnstore indexing where appropriate.
- Produce a prioritised remediation roadmap balancing technical benefit, operational risk and long-term maintainability.
- Produce comprehensive technical documentation, operational recommendations and knowledge transfer for the Data Engineering team.
- Extensive experience administering and optimising large-scale (multi-terabyte) Microsoft SQL Server Enterprise environments across multiple SQL Server versions (required).
- Expert understanding of SQL Server storage engine internals, including database and transaction log architecture, allocation structures, filegroups, autogrowth behaviour, recovery and storage optimisation (required).
- Deep understanding of SQL Server query optimisation, including execution plan analysis, Query Optimiser behaviour, cardinality estimation, parameter sensitivity, indexing strategies and statistics management (required).
- Extensive experience diagnosing complex production performance issues using native SQL Server diagnostic capabilities, including Query Store, Dynamic Management Views (DMVs), Extended Events, wait statistics and performance baselining (required).
- Strong understanding of SQL Server workload optimisation, including concurrency, blocking, deadlocking, isolation levels, memory grants, TempDB optimisation and parallelism (required).
- Demonstrable experience leveraging SQL Server 2022 capabilities, including Intelligent Query Processing, Query Store enhancements and modern data warehouse optimisation techniques to improve performance, scalability and operational efficiency (required).
- Strong understanding of enterprise data warehouse architectures and optimisation techniques, including partitioning, compression, columnstore indexing, data lifecycle management and large-scale analytical workloads (required).
- Proven ability to deliver complex technical remediation programmes within enterprise SQL Server environments, balancing technical improvements against operational risk (required).
- Excellent analytical, communication and documentation skills, with the ability to work independently and deliver effective knowledge transfer (required).
- Experience optimising ETL workloads and enterprise reporting platforms (nice-to-have).
- Experience working within Data Platform, Business Intelligence or Analytics engineering teams (nice-to-have).
- Experience delivering consultancy or specialist technical engagements (nice-to-have).
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