Lead Database Platform Engineer

About the Job

The Lead Database Platform Engineer is a senior leadership role responsible for the endtoend ownership, evolution, and reliability of Great Eastern's enterprise database platforms. This role combines strategic platform leadership with clear operational accountability, overseeing a largescale hybrid and multicloud database estate supporting missioncritical workloads across onpremises and cloud environments.

Beyond traditional database administration, the role drives platform modernisation, automationfirst operations, cloudnative and distributed database adoption, and AIassisted database management, while retaining accountability for availability, performance, security, audit outcomes, and regulatory compliance.

The role leads and develops a team of DBAs and database engineers and partners closely with application, cloud, security, and engineering teams to deliver highly available, scalable, secure, and futureready database platforms.

Platform Leadership & People Management

• Lead, mentor, and develop a highperforming database platform team comprising DBAs and database engineers across multiple technologies.
• Own performance management, succession planning, capability uplift, and career pathways for mid to seniorlevel DB professionals.
• Define clear team objectives aligned to platform reliability, automation, and modernisation outcomes.
• Foster a culture of engineering excellence, automation, accountability, collaboration, and continuous improvement.
• Act as the senior technical authority for database platform architecture, engineering standards, and operational practices.
• Proactively resolve conflicts and ensure effective collaboration across infrastructure, application, and security teams.

Enterprise Database Platforms & Architecture

• Own the endtoend architecture and lifecycle of enterprise database platforms, including:
• -Oracle (19c+), Exadata / ExaCC
• -Microsoft SQL Server
• -PostgreSQL / YugabyteDB (Distributed SQL)
• -MySQL / MariaDB
• -IBM DB2
• Define and maintain reference architectures for onpremises, hybrid, and cloudbased database deployments (including OCI).
• Drive adoption of cloudnative and distributed database architectures to improve scalability, resilience, and operational efficiency.
• Partner with application and solution architects to ensure optimal data models, workload patterns, and performanceaware designs.
• Translate architectural standards into productionready, supportable, and auditable implementations.

Operational Accountability, Reliability & Resilience

• Retain ultimate accountability for production database platform stability, availability, and recoverability, even as operations are increasingly automated.
• Ensure databases consistently meet defined SLA, SLO, and availability targets.
• Lead and govern incident response, root cause analysis, and postincident remediation for complex and highseverity database incidents.
• Define and oversee robust backup, recovery, disaster recovery, and highavailability strategies across all platforms.
• Minimise business impact during upgrades, patching, and maintenance through resiliencebydesign and automation.
• Ensure clear oncall, escalation, and recoverability models are in place to support 24x7 businesscritical systems.

Automation, DevOps & Database Platform Engineering

• Drive an automationfirst operating model for database platforms using InfrastructureasCode (IaC), scripting, and orchestration.
• Define which database activities are:
• Fully automated and selfservice
• Guardrailcontrolled with approvals
• Humanled due to risk or regulatory requirements
• Enable Database DevOps / DataOps practices, including CI/CD integration for schema changes and database deployments.
• Collaborate with tooling and observability teams to deliver:
• Automated provisioning and lifecycle management
• Proactive monitoring, alerting, and selfhealing capabilities
• Standardised dashboards and operational insights
• Ensure automated operations remain secure, auditable, and compliant with change and risk management policies.

Cloud, Hybrid & Platform Modernisation

• Lead database modernisation initiatives, including:
• Cloud migrations and hybrid architectures
• Version upgrades and platform refreshes
• Capacity expansion and performance optimisation
• Define and execute nearterm and longterm database platform roadmaps aligned with Group IT strategies.
• Provide thought leadership on managed database services, cloudnative databases, and emerging platform capabilities.
• Own delivery outcomes for platform initiatives, ensuring designs are successfully realised in production.

AIDriven Operations & Observability (AIOps)

• Champion the adoption of AIassisted database operations, including:
• Intelligent performance monitoring and tuning
• Automated anomaly detection and workload prediction
• AIdriven recommendations for indexing, partitioning, and query optimisation
• Leverage platforms such as Oracle OEM with AI extensions and modern observability tools.
• Define measurable outcomes for AIOps adoption, such as:
• Reduction in MTTR
• Reduction in manual operational effort
• Improved availability and performance predictability
• Explore AIenabled governance, compliance, and security capabilities.

Security, Governance, Risk & Compliance

• Ensure database platforms comply with internal security policies and external regulatory requirements.
• Own database hardening, vulnerability remediation, encryption, access control, and data protection practices.
• Define governance models for automated and selfservice database operations, ensuring auditability and risk controls.
• Partner with Security, Risk, and Compliance teams to manage audits, remediate findings, and continuously improve controls.
• Ensure adherence to change management, incident management, and operational governance frameworks.

Stakeholder & Vendor Management

• Act as the primary senior stakeholder for database platform health, strategy, risks, and major incidents.
• Communicate complex technical topics clearly to senior IT and business leaders.
• Collaborate with Group and regional counterparts to align standards and share best practices.
• Manage strategic relationships with database and platform vendors, ensuring SLAs and contractual obligations are met.
• Represent the database platform domain in crossfunctional and enterprisewide initiatives.

We are looking for people who

Experience & Technical Expertise

• Extensive experience managing largescale, enterprise database environments in regulated industries.
• Deep expertise in Oracle (including Exadata/ExaCC), SQL Server, PostgreSQL / YugabyteDB, MySQL, and DB2.
• Strong experience with Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) and hybrid cloud database architectures.
• Proven leadership in database modernisation, cloud migration, and platform engineering initiatives.
• Strong scripting and automation skills (e.g., Shell, Python, SQL, infrastructure automation concepts).
• Solid understanding of endtoend infrastructure (OS, storage, network, cloud, security).

Leadership & Professional Skills

• Demonstrated ability to lead and influence senior stakeholders.
• Strong vendor and partner management experience.
• Excellent problemsolving, incident management, and decisionmaking skills.
• Strong communication skills with the ability to translate technical concepts into business outcomes.

Experience & Qualifications

• Possesses Bachelor Degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, or a related field. Professional certification such as Oracle Certified Professional (OCP) is added advantage.
• Typically 12+ years of experience in enterprise database roles, with at least 5 years in a senior leadership or platformscale role.
• Deep expertise in core enterprise databases (Oracle, SQL Server) with governancelevel oversight of additional platforms (PostgreSQL/Yugabyte, MySQL/MariaDB, DB2).
• Strong experience with Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) and hybrid cloud database architectures.
• Proven leadership in database modernisation, cloud migration, automation, and platform engineering initiatives.
• Strong scripting and automation skills (e.g. Shell, Python, SQL, IaC concepts).
• Solid understanding of endtoend infrastructure (OS, storage, network, cloud, security).
• Relevant database or cloud certifications (e.g. Oracle, cloud platforms) are advantageous.

How you succeed

• Champion and embody our Core Values in everyday tasks and interactions.
• Demonstrate high level of integrity and accountability.
• Take initiative to drive improvements and embrace change.
• Take accountability of business and regulatory compliance risks, implementing measures to mitigate them effectively.
• Keep abreast with industry trends, regulatory compliance, and emerging threats and technologies to understand and highlight potential concerns/ risks to safeguard our company proactively.

Who we are

Founded in 1908, Great Eastern is a well-established market leader and trusted brand in Singapore and Malaysia. With over S$100 billion in assets and more than 16 million policyholders, including 12.5 million from government schemes, it provides insurance solutions to customers through three successful distribution channels a tied agency force, bancassurance, and financial advisory firm Great Eastern Financial Advisers. The Group also operates in Indonesia and Brunei.

The Great Eastern Life Assurance Company Limited and Great Eastern General Insurance Limited have been assigned the financial strength and counterparty credit ratings of AA- by S&P Global Ratings since 2010, one of the highest among Asian life insurance companies. Great Eastern's asset management subsidiary, Lion Global Investors Limited, is one of the leading asset management companies in Southeast Asia.

Great Eastern is a subsidiary of OCBC, the longest established Singapore bank, formed in 1932. It is the second largest financial services group in Southeast Asia by assets and one of the world's most highly-rated banks, with an Aa1 rating from Moody's and AA- by both Fitch and S&P.