Advertisement: Nominet are recruiting

This is a bit of an advertisement for my current employer, Nominet, who are one of the largest internet registries in the world, and run the .uk ccTLD. We are currently looking for an additional DBA. You will be able to get your hands dirty on RAC and Dataguard, we currently use 10gR2 but will be looking to upgrade to 11g some time this year. Nominet actively encourages you to blog about your work and there is plenty of opportunity to become involved with the UKOUG.

You will need a good amount of experience with Oracle but an ability to learn is probably just as important as number of years clocked up. A working knowledge of Unix/Linux would be beneficial as we have to support the full stack from carving up the storage to configuring the applications. The technical department has an excellent can-do attitude and you probably will have too. Nominet is a comfortable working environment and there is also the bonus that you would be able to work alongside some excellent people

I have been involved in several recruitment rounds with Nominet and I have been really astounded at the lack of applicants that we have received. Is there really a dearth of DBAs out there? I got round to concluding it was the location, as the rates of pay on offer are competitive compared to other non-city of London positions. We also seemed to attract large number of applicants with dubious work permits. I had to laugh when I saw a candidate who claimed to be OCP certified and had this stamped onto his cv, but in the text had misspelled Oracle!

I have also been surprised when an interview candidate mentioned the buffer cache hit ratio in response to a question regarding a good way of investigating users complaining about performance problems. They did not get the job. I was amazed, I think partly, due to the advent of blogging. Compared to even a few years ago, there is such a wealth of excellent information out there in the blogosphere, that I think any person claiming to be a DBA who is not keeping up-to-date with current Oracle best practice just has no excuse as it’s never been easier.

So if you or someone you know is interested, then the full details are on the Nominet website. Also there are other vacancies for a System Administrator and a couple of developers into the bargain, all based in Oxford. The closing date on these is 27/01/08, so if you are reading this after then, sorry you are too late.