• Define and execute the enterprise Database Platform Engineering strategy aligned with product, cloud transformation, and business goals. • Drive modernization initiatives for tooling, automation, and developer experience. • Establish standards for SQL Server deployments, reliability, performance optimization, capacity management, and disaster recovery. • Lead modernization across all database platforms, including transitions toward cloud-native and managed database services. • Partner with application teams to ensure database designs meet scalability, observability, security, and compliance requirements. • Own reference architectures for SQL Server and related data platforms. • Establish best practices for performance, scalability, security, and cost efficiency in AWS. • Own and manage HA/DR architectures including Always On Availability Groups, clustering, and replication. • Standardize database-as-code practices using Terraform, CloudFormation, or similar tools. • Ensure 99.95%+ availability for Tier-1 database services. • Implement and optimize observability capabilities including monitoring, logging, alerting, and proactive incident response. • Drive capacity planning, cost optimization, and FinOps practices for database platforms. • Introduce and scale modern engineering practices including IaC, CI/CD for database changes, and advanced observability tooling. • Enforce enterprise-grade security controls such as encryption at rest/in transit, least-privilege access, data masking, and auditing. • Ensure database platforms remain compliant with SOC, HIPAA, HITRUST, and other regulatory frameworks. • Partner with the CISO on data protection, vulnerability management, and modernization of security practices. • Collaborate with Product Engineering leadership to deliver database solutions optimized for developer speed, reliability, and flexibility. • Serve as a trusted advisor to senior executives on database strategy, architecture, modernization, and risk. • Build, mentor, and lead a high-performing team of database architects and engineers.