Azure Cloud & MS-SQL Consultant

Responsibilities

• Monitoring & Alerts
• Review and respond to alerts from Azure Monitor, Log Analytics, and other monitoring tools.
• Investigate resource utilization (CPU, RAM, storage, network).
• Identify recurring incidents and suggest automation.
• Incident & Request Handling
• Work on tickets escalated from L1 / tech Support.
• Perform root cause analysis and create knowledge base articles for recurring issues.
• Escalate complex infra/app issues to L3 or vendor support if needed.
• Maintenance & Patching
• Schedule and monitor patch deployments for VMs/resources.
• Validate post-patch system health.
• Database Monitoring & Health Checks
• Monitor SQL server jobs, error logs, blocking sessions, deadlocks.
• Track database growth, free space, and index fragmentation.
• Review backup job success/failures.
• Incident Handling
• Resolve tickets related to:
• Query timeouts / performance slowness.
• User access/permissions issues.
• Database connectivity errors.
• Escalate high-severity DB corruption or complex performance tuning issues to L3/DBA.
• Backup & Restore Support
• Verify daily backups (full, differential, log).
• Perform restore requests for developers/test environments.
• Maintenance Tasks
• Run index and statistics updates (scheduled jobs).
• Apply minor patches/hotfixes under DBA guidance.
• Validate SQL Agent jobs are running successfully.
• Request Fulfillment like:
• Creating new databases (with standard templates).
• Providing database exports/imports.
• Running approved scripts.
• Documentation & Reporting
• Update incident resolution steps in knowledge base.
• Share weekly/monthly health reports with management.

Education / Background

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, IT, or related field (or equivalent experience).
• 4–6 years of experience in Microsoft Azure Cloud IT support, preferably cloud or infrastructure.
• 4–6 years of experience working with SQL Server in support or operations.

Technical Skills

• 5+ years of hands on experience on Azure Portal navigation and core services:
• Virtual Machines (VMs), Storage Accounts, Networking (VNet, NSG, VPN), Azure AD.
• 5+ years of hands on experience with Identity & Access Management (IAM/RBAC).
• Basic knowledge of Azure Monitor, Log Analytics, and Alerts.
• 5+ years of hands on experience handling backups and restore operations in Azure.
• Familiarity with resource provisioning and scaling.
• Understanding of cost management/billing basics.
• 5+ years of hands on experience of SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS).
• Ability to: Monitor and troubleshoot SQL Agent jobs; Check logs for failures, blocking, and deadlocks; Run queries for health checks (sessions, backups, fragmentation).
• Familiarity with backups & restores (full, differential, log).
• Knowledge of user/role management and security.
• Basic performance troubleshooting (identify slow queries, blocking sessions).
• Understanding of indexes, statistics, and maintenance plans.

Tools / Practices

• Ticketing systems (ServiceNow, JIRA, Remedy, etc.).
• Knowledge of ITIL processes (Incident, Problem, Change Management).
• Basic understanding of security/compliance in cloud environments.
• Experience with monitoring tools (Kibana/Grafana).

Soft Skills

• Strong troubleshooting and analytical skills.
• Good communication skills (able to explain technical issues clearly to non-technical users).
• Ability to work on shift-based support (24x7 environments in many orgs).
• Ability to follow standard operating procedures (SOPs).
• Good documentation habits for resolutions.
• Escalation judgment — knowing when to push to L3/DBA.
• Problem management mindset not just fixing, but preventing recurrence.
• Strong documentation and ability to create/run knowledge base articles.
• Ability to mentor/help L1 engineers.
• ITIL Foundation certification (good to have).
• Willingness to work in 24x7 / on-call rotation.

Nice to Have; (But not a must)

• Automation & Scripting
• PowerShell or Azure CLI for automating routine tasks.
• Writing simple T-SQL scripts to automate repetitive tasks.
• Exposure to PowerShell for database operations.
• Performance Tuning Basics
• Ability to analyze execution plans and identify query bottlenecks.
• Understanding indexing strategies beyond basics.
• Familiarity with SQL Always On Availability Groups, Failover Clustering.