DBA / ETL Developer

Axle•Bethesda, MD

26d•$90,000 - $100,000•Hybrid

About The Position

Axle is seeking a DBA / ETL Developer to support the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in managing, integrating, and optimizing data that underpins research, grants management, and administrative operations. The role combines database administration with hands-on ETL development to ensure NIH data is accurate, secure, and available for reporting and analytics in a complex federal health environment.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, Data Engineering, or a related field.
5+ years of professional experience as a Database Administrator and/or ETL Developer supporting enterprise systems.
Hands-on experience with at least one major RDBMS (SQL Server, Oracle, PostgreSQL) including installation, configuration, performance tuning, and backup/recovery.
Strong SQL skills and experience creating stored procedures, views, functions, and indexes.
Experience designing and maintaining ETL processes using tools or frameworks such as SSIS, Informatica, Azure Data Factory, or similar.
Understanding of data warehousing concepts (star schema, slowly changing dimensions, staging layers) and relational data modeling.
Ability to troubleshoot database and ETL issues in multi-environment (dev/test/prod) settings and work collaboratively with cross-functional teams.
Ability to be on-site two days a week in Bethesda, MD.
U.S. Citizenship and eligibility for a Public Trust or equivalent federal background investigation.

Nice To Haves

Prior experience supporting NIH, HHS, or other federal health agencies.
Familiarity with cloud data platforms (Azure SQL, Azure Synapse, AWS RDS, or similar) and secure data integration patterns in government environments.
Experience with scripting languages (PowerShell, Python, or Bash) for automation and operational support.
Knowledge of data governance, metadata management, and master data management concepts.
Experience working in environments subject to federal security and compliance frameworks (FISMA, FedRAMP).

Responsibilities

Administer, monitor, and tune relational databases (e.g., SQL Server, Oracle, or PostgreSQL) supporting NIH applications and analytics workloads.
Design, develop, and maintain ETL jobs and data pipelines to extract, transform, and load data from multiple NIH source systems into data warehouses, marts, or operational data stores.
Implement and maintain database objects (tables, views, indexes, stored procedures, functions) and ensure adherence to schema and data standards.
Perform performance tuning, capacity planning, backup and recovery, and ongoing health checks for development, test, and production environments.
Collaborate with data analysts, application developers, and NIH stakeholders to understand data requirements and translate them into robust database and ETL solutions.
Implement and enforce data quality checks, validation rules, and audit controls within ETL processes.
Support data migration and modernization efforts, including movement from legacy systems to modern databases or cloud platforms as directed by NIH.
Ensure compliance with NIH, HHS, and federal security and privacy policies, including appropriate user access controls and data handling practices.