Sr Azure Cloud Engineer Data

About Ascent

Ascent Global Logistics headquartered in Belleville Michigan is a leading global provider of expedited time-critical logistics solutions and other direct transportation services. The company connects customers to its extensive carrier network internal ground fleet and airline via its proprietary digital PEAK freight marketplace which provides robust carrier capacity and transparent pricing backed by 24/7/365 logistics experts. Ascents offerings include air charter and ground expedited solutions truckload less-than-truckload global forwarding brokerage and managed transportation services. The experienced Ascent team solves customers most challenging logistics needs by providing industry-leading service and top-tier satisfaction.

Our Guiding Principles

At the core of Ascents culture is a strong commitment to excellence driven by the passion and dedication of every team member. Were equally dedicated to going above and beyond for our customers ensuring this commitment extends beyond our team and brings exceptional value to those we serve. We aim for perfect execution in everything we do and play hard by creating an environment where tasks are performed with a can-do attitude from start to finish. We play smart by delivering on our commitments honestly fairly and ethically. We treat every person we interface with the utmost dignity and respect. We understand that our teammates are our most valuable assets so we play together by making every effort to provide professional and enjoyable experience enabling careers to flourish and personal growth to be achieved.

What Youll Do

• Define reference architectures for OLTP/OLAP HA/DR (AGs clustering) capacity planning multi-region resilience and data lifecycle (backup/restore/RPO/RTO).
• Build and operate SQL on Azure SQL/MI Azure SQL/VM Azure SQL DB AWS RDS (SQL Server) GCP Cloud SQL plus hybrid SQL Server; Integrate with Synapse/Databricks/Snowflake where appropriate.
• Lead end-to-end tuning workload baselining indexing strategies query plans parameter sniffing concurrency and storage I/O optimization.
• Own SLOs/SLIs patching upgrades schema changes release orchestration and incident response/on-call for critical systems.
• Enforce least-privilege access via Azure AD RBAC Private Link VNet integration and managed identities.
• Implement and own enterprise-grade data protection and encryption across the entire platform including TDE Always Encrypted Dynamic Data Masking and row-level encryption.
• Design implement and maintain comprehensive SQL monitoring including Azure Monitor Database diagnostic settings Query Store DMVs/DMFs at scale and alerts on DTU/Vcores
• Proactive Data Backup Solutions for mission-critical availability & resiliency
• Implement Always on Availability Groups (multi-subnet read-scale hybrid Azure/on-prem) with Failover automation quorum design and regular DR drills
• Implement RBAC encryption secrets masking and audit trails align with change management and regulatory needs and drive posture reviews.
• Participate as a member of the off-hours on-call data support team.
• Standardize IaC (Terraform/Bicep/CloudFormation) DB DevOps (Flyway/Liquibase) and CI/CD for schema migrations; codify runbooks and self-service.
• Translate business goals into platform roadmaps lead design reviews and provide executive-ready status on risk capacity and cost.
• Technically lead and mentor IT data engineers/DBAs.
• Lead SQL performance reviews DB performance reviews and ensure proper security connectivity and governance over the Azure managed instance ecosystem.
• Evaluate tools manage SOWs/licensing and optimize cloud/database spend (rightsizing storage tiers reserved capacity).

What Youll Bring

Preferred

• Experience with Infrastructure as Code (IaC) using Terraform or Bicep and database change automation with Flyway or Liquibase.
• Familiarity with observability stacks (CloudWatch Cloud Logging Azure Monitor) Grafana/Datadog and basic APM.
• Experience with Snowflake Synapse Databricks or Kafka/Event Hubs integration patterns.
• Experience implementing data security controls (masking tokenization) and aligning with audit/regulatory requirements.
• Demonstrated success in team building including staff mentoring and vendor oversight.

Minimum

• 10 years of hands-on experience with Azure AWS or GCP (including engine internals HA/DR and performance) with at least 3 years technically leading teams and mentoring engineers.
• Proven experience operating SQL workloads across at least two major clouds (Azure AWS GCP) including hybrid/on-prem environments.
• Strong command of T-SQL performance tuning indexing strategies and storage fundamentals.
• Solid understanding of OS storage and networking basics (Windows/Linux SAN/NAS IOPS/latency) plus automation experience with PowerShell or Python.
• Demonstrated ownership of production SLOs change management processes and regulated release practices.
• Excellent communication skills with the ability to diagram document and brief executives clearly.
• High level of professionalism commitment and leadership.
• Excellent oral and written communication skills.
• Self-motivated proactive efficient and highly organized.
• Professional confident and approachable demeanor.
• Strong desire and ability to learn rapidly.
• Ability to work independently with minimal supervision while maintaining high performance.
• Ability to mentor mid-level DBAs data engineers and technical staff.
• Ability to collaborate effectively with clients and team members to ensure solutions meet business needs and exceed expectations.
• Ability to estimate work effort accurately and consistently meet delivery commitments.

Ascents Competitive Benefits

• 401(k) and employer matching

• Life Insurance

• Health Dental Vision Insurance

• Short- & Long-Term Disability

• Paid Time Off (PTO)

• Employee Assistance Program

• Paid Parental Leave

• Employee Wellness Program

• Paid Holidays

• Employee Recognition Programs

• Flexible Spending Account (FSA)

• Tuition Reimbursement

• Health Savings Account (HSA)

• Overtime Differential & Bonus Pay

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