Sr. Manager, DBA - Foundational Technology

About the Role

What You'll Do

Service Ownership and Accountability

• Own end-to-end service health, availability, performance and recoverability outcomes for enterprise database platforms across on-premises and cloud environments.

• Act as the primary Gap escalation point and decision authority for database services delivered by the managed services partner.

• Ensure database platforms meet defined SLAs, SLOs, RTO/RPO targets and peak-readiness requirements, including seasonal and business-critical events.

• Ensure database services reliably support revenue-generating, supply chain, store and reporting workloads with minimal business disruption.

Platform Scope and Enablement

• Provide service ownership across a diverse portfolio of database technologies, including:

  • Relational platforms (e.g., Oracle, SQL Server, PostgreSQL, MySQL, DB2)

  • Non-relational and in-memory platforms (e.g., MongoDB, Redis)

  • Cloud-native and managed database services

• Ensure consistent standards for configuration, availability, backup, recovery, patching and lifecycle management across platforms.

• Enable secure, scalable and performant data persistence across hybrid-cloud architectures.

Vendor and Delivery Oversight

• Govern managed services delivery by:

  • Setting database service standards and operational expectations

  • Reviewing service performance, incidents, trends and capacity posture

  • Driving accountability for remediation, root cause elimination and technical debt reduction

• Partner with managed services leadership to balance demand, capacity, risk and cost while protecting Gap’s business priorities.

• Operational Excellence and Resilience

• Drive improvements in database observability, monitoring, alerting and automation to reduce incidents and mean time to recovery.

• Ensure database platforms are designed and operated with high availability, disaster recovery and data protection as first-order concerns.

• Participate in incident, problem and post-incident reviews for database-related events, ensuring clear ownership and corrective actions.

Modernization and Strategy

• Lead database platform modernization efforts, including:

  • Cloud adoption and migration strategies

  • Automation and Infrastructure-as-Code enablement

  • Platform standardization and rationalization

• Contribute to multi-year database and foundational technology roadmaps aligned to business, product and architecture strategy.

Collaboration and Governance

• Partner closely with application engineering, data engineering, SRE, infrastructure, security and architecture teams to enable reliable and scalable data platforms.

• Ensure compliance with internal and external standards (e.g., PCI, SOX, data protection and privacy requirements).

• Contribute to governance forums, capacity planning, resilience planning and strategic initiatives related to database services.

Role Scope and Operating Model

• This role operates within a managed services model, where day-to-day database operations and Level 1 - Level 3 support are delivered by a strategic service partner.

• The Sr. Manager provides service ownership, governance, prioritization and escalation leadership, rather than performing hands-on database administration.

• Accountability is focused on service health, availability, recoverability and outcomes, with execution carried out through established operational runbooks and delivery teams

Who You Are

Required

• Proven experience owning or leading enterprise-scale database platforms in hybrid-cloud environments.

• Strong knowledge of relational and non-relational database technologies and architectures.

• Demonstrated success operating in a managed services or vendor-led delivery model, with clear ownership of outcomes.

• Ability to lead through influence in a highly matrixed, global organization.

• Experience partnering with third-party service providers and holding them accountable to defined service expectations.

• Strong operational mindset with experience in availability, disaster recovery, incident management and continuous improvement.

• Excellent communication, collaboration and problem-solving skills.

Preferred

• Experience with Oracle, SQL Server, PostgreSQL, MongoDB, Redis or equivalent enterprise platforms.

• Exposure to cloud-native database services and migration programs.

• Familiarity with automation, Infrastructure as Code, observability and SRE-aligned practices.

• Cloud or database platform certifications (Azure, OCI, GCP, Oracle, etc.).