The Child and Family Agency was established on 1st January 2014 and is responsible for a range of statutory functions including provision of child protection, alternative care, specified regulatory services and a range of family support services. The Agency has commenced a major improvement programme with significant focus on Practice, Culture and Structure.

The Agency currently has responsibility for a budget of circa €1.2billion and delivers its services through over 5,500 people in 259 locations across the Country.
The Child and Family Agency has responsibility for the following range of services:
• Child Protection and Welfare
• Parenting, Family Support and Early Help Services
• Alternative Care
• Birth Information & Tracing and Adoption
• Tusla Education Support Services (TESS)
• Children’s Service Regulation
• Counselling and Therapeutic Supports
Further information is available on www.tusla.ie

About Tusla ICT
Tusla ICT provides the innovation, systems, and support to assist the Agency in delivering its services to children and families, as well as achieving its business and strategic objectives.

Tusla has one of the largest ICT networks in the Irish Public Service, with approximately 6,000 users and 325 office/centre locations. The ICT directorate is responsible for delivering the following functions: ICT Networks, Server and Storage Management; Cyber Security, Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery; 0365 and Cloud Management; Application Development; Digital Transformation and Support; Data and Information Management; Service Delivery; ICT Business Support, Governance and ICT Programme Management.

Key Duties and Responsibilities
This role is primarily technical in nature and requires an in-depth practical knowledge of database management, optimisation, integration and analytics\reporting in Microsoft SQL Server and Azure environments. The duties and responsibilities will include:

Cloud & Database Administration (Primary Focus: Azure)
• Hybrid Environment Management: Manage, support and maintain a hybrid data estate that is now primarily Azure cloud-based, while maintaining legacy on-premise Microsoft SQL Server databases.
• Managing database availability and capacity for all Tusla environments (Cloud and on- premise).
• Database Monitoring: monitor status, uptime and performance of database resources. Checks jobs and alerts to ensure database resources are operating and available.
• Performance Optimisation: troubleshoot and address performance issues and tune database and processes to optimise database performance.
• Migrations: Migrate databases to new servers, and to cloud. Migrate data between systems.
• Administration of Objects: Ongoing administration and deployment of users and database objects: indexes, tables, views, constraints, sequences, snapshots, and stored procedures.
• Security & Encryption: Review security alerts and address vulnerabilities. Patch and upgrade database servers. Configure and manage security and encryption of servers and databases (including TDE) in Azure and on-premise environments.
• High Availability: Configure and manage high availability database servers and databases both on-premise and in Azure.
• Backups: Configuring and managing database backups and restores. Carry out test restores and DR restores on regular basis and document results.
• Database masking – anonymising data and deploying databases for test environments.
• Strong T-SQL Knowledge: Proficient in writing and optimizing complex queries, managing relational tables, and performing data analysis on structured datasets.
• Contribute to researching emerging data related technologies and progress innovation.

Data Engineering & Transformation
• Azure Data Factory: Design and manage Azure Data Factory (ADF) pipelines to orchestrate data movement and transformation.
• Data Transformation: Implement complex data transformations to support analytics and reporting requirements using cloud-native tools.
• Fabric Lakehouse Support: Support Fabric Lakehouse for Tusla datasets.
• SSIS Packages: Monitor and maintain SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) packages and migrating relevant workflows to Azure Data Factory where appropriate.
• Managing DevOps Code repositories and pipelines for deployment to segregated environments.
• Implement automated scaling and maintenance tasks using Azure Automation runbooks.

Reporting & Standards
• Reporting Services: Managing Power BI server, Azure Fabric and assisting in design and deployment of reports.
• Standards & Procedures: Creation and maintenance of database standards and policies.
• Alerts: Designing and implementing database alerts, standard operating procedures, and event management.
• Innovation: Contribute to researching emerging data-related technologies and progress innovation.

Resource Management
• Plan, manage and prioritise effectively and work to agreed timescales.
• If applicable, to train, supervise, and evaluate staff in their respective roles on the Data & Information Management team. · If applicable, ensuring that the appropriate performance management frameworks are implemented for any assigned staff.
Relationship Management and Collaboration
• Agile Development: Work in collaboration with an agile software development team in delivering the database and data pipeline components of web applications, mobile, and other solutions being developed by Tusla ICT.
• Service Delivery: Work in collaboration with the ICT Service Delivery team as required to support data-related tier 3 issues, incident management, and problem management.

Health & Safety
• Comply with and contribute to the development of policies, procedures, guidelines and safe professional practice and adhere to relevant legislation, regulations and standards.
• Have a working knowledge of the Health Information and Quality Authority (HIQA) Standards as they apply to the service for example National Standards for Child Protection and Care and comply with associated Tusla – Child and Family Agency protocols for implementing and maintaining these standards as appropriate to the role.
• To support, promote and actively participate in sustainable energy, water and waste initiatives to create a more sustainable, low carbon and efficient health service.

The above Job Description is not intended to be a comprehensive list of all duties involved and consequently, the post holder may be required to perform other duties as appropriate to the post which may be assigned to him/her from time to time and to contribute to the development of the post while in office.

Please refer to the Candidate Information pack attached to this campaign for full and further detail.

Applicants must by the closing date of application have the following:
• Have a third level qualification in Data Science, ICT, Computer Science, Engineering or a related discipline and/or a relevant professional database qualification (Azure Database Administrator Associate or Azure Data Engineer Associate)
• Have a minimum of 3 years’ experience in a similar role.
• Have excellent hands-on technical experience of database administration, maintenance, integration, analysis and reporting.
• Experience with Azure Data Platform: Demonstrated experience working with Azure SQL Database, Azure SQL Managed Instance, or similar cloud database technologies.
• Data Pipeline Experience: Proven experience in supporting and managing data pipelines using Azure Data Factory for data transformation.

Health
A candidate for and any person holding the office must be fully competent and capable of undertaking the duties attached to the office and be in a state of health such as would indicate a reasonable prospect of ability to render regular and efficient service.
Character
Each candidate for and any person holding the office must be of good character.