Senior MySQL DBA (Replication Specialist)

We are calling candidates on behalf of a Software Solutions company headquartered in East Brunswick, NJ. Incorporated in 2003, It provides comprehensive range of solutions in the area of GRC, Technology, Procurement, Healthcare Provider and Oracle to customers across the globe. Combining our unparalleled experience of over a decade in the software industry and global reach, we have grown with extensive capabilities across industry verticals.
Job Title: Senior MySQL DBA – Replication Specialist
Work Timing: 6AM EST – 7PM EST
Experience: 8+ Years
Engagement Type: Long-term / Multi-year (Contract / Full-time)
Position Summary
We are seeking an experienced Senior MySQL Database Administrator with deep expertise in MySQL replication to support and improve a client's production database environment. The client currently runs MySQL 5.7, with an active migration to MySQL 8 underway. The client's master/primary database is managed by a separate vendor; this role is responsible for the client's three MySQL read replicas, one of which serves live read traffic for the client's application.
This role requires strong hands-on experience designing, monitoring, and troubleshooting MySQL InnoDB replication at scale (~2.5TB), including diagnosing replication delays, rebuilding failed replicas efficiently, and advising the client on ways to modernize and harden the overall replication architecture.
Key Responsibilities
Replication Monitoring & Incident Response
Perform daily monitoring of replication health and lag across all read replicas, proactively identifying and responding to delays before they impact the application.
Diagnose and resolve replication failures on the ~2.5TB production database, minimizing time-to-recovery.
Coordinate with the client's infrastructure team when a replica failure requires a DNS change to route application read traffic to a healthy replica.
Rebuild failed or broken replicas, and identify ways to speed up the rebuild process (e.g., parallelized data copy, Percona XtraBackup-based provisioning, snapshot/clone-based rebuilds, network and disk I/O tuning).
Replication Architecture & Improvement
Design & Implement Topologies: Architect, deploy, and manage advanced MySQL replication environments, including traditional Asynchronous, Semi-Synchronous, and Group Replication.
Evaluate the client's current replication setup (externally managed master, three read replicas) and recommend and implement improvements to resiliency, failover speed, and rebuild time.
Apply deep replication knowledge — binary logging (Row-Based vs. Statement-Based Replication), GTID (Global Transaction Identifiers), and multi-source replication — to troubleshoot and optimize the environment.
Support the client's MySQL 5.7 to MySQL 8 migration, ensuring replication compatibility and minimal disruption across all replicas.
Cluster Management & Disaster Recovery
Administer and monitor production MySQL InnoDB Clusters, ClusterSets, and Galera/Percona XtraDB Clusters where applicable.
Build, maintain, and test backup and point-in-time recovery (PITR) strategies using Percona XtraBackup, MySQL Enterprise Backup, or cloud-native snapshots.
Performance Optimization
Monitor, diagnose, and resolve multi-threaded replication delays caused by long-running transactions or disk I/O bottlenecks.
Identify and optimize slow queries impacting the master node to prevent replica performance degradation.
Monitoring & Tooling
Configure and monitor database metrics using Percona Monitoring and Management (PMM) and related observability tooling.
Use MySQL Router, ProxySQL, or HAProxy for intelligent connection pooling and read/write splitting across replicas.
Required Qualifications
8+ years of hands-on MySQL DBA experience, with a strong specialization in replication architecture and operations.
Proven experience administering production MySQL InnoDB replication environments at multi-terabyte scale (2TB+).
Experience operating in environments where the primary/master database is managed by a third-party vendor, with DBA ownership limited to read replicas.
Demonstrated experience rebuilding failed replicas on large databases and reducing rebuild time.
Experience with MySQL 5.7 to MySQL 8 upgrade/migration projects.
Strong troubleshooting skills for replication lag, replication failures, and DNS-based failover/traffic rerouting.
Technical Skills
MySQL & Replication
MySQL 5.7/8.0, InnoDB Replication, Asynchronous/Semi-Synchronous/Group Replication, GTID, Row-Based vs. Statement-Based Replication (binary logging), Multi-Source Replication, MySQL InnoDB Cluster/ClusterSet, Galera/Percona XtraDB Cluster.
Backup & Recovery
Percona XtraBackup, MySQL Enterprise Backup, Point-in-Time Recovery (PITR), cloud-native snapshots.
Monitoring & Proxy Tools
Percona Monitoring and Management (PMM), MySQL Router, ProxySQL, HAProxy.
Performance & Operations
Query optimization and tuning, disk I/O and OS-level performance tuning, DNS-based failover/traffic routing, large-scale (2.5TB+) database rebuild and provisioning.
Core Competencies
MySQL Replication Architecture
Disaster Recovery & Backup Strategy
Performance Troubleshooting & Optimization
Incident Response & Root-Cause Analysis
Monitoring & Observability
Process Improvement & Automation
Stakeholder Communication
Attention to Detail Under Production Pressure
Success Measures
Reduced replica rebuild time following failures, measured against current baseline.
Reduced frequency and duration of replication lag/delay incidents.
Improved mean-time-to-recovery (MTTR) for replica failures, including DNS-based failover events.
Disruption-free completion of the MySQL 5.7 to MySQL 8 migration across all replicas.
Strengthened monitoring coverage and proactive alerting for replication health.
Documented, repeatable rebuild and failover runbooks adopted by the client team.

Work arrangement
No