Rob Giammaria

Senior Database Administrator and Backup/Recovery Specialist with 24 years of experience maintaining the availability, performance, security, and recoverability of mission-critical enterprise and federal government database environments. Extensive hands-on experience across SQL Server, Db2 LUW/pureScale, SAP ASE, Oracle, and PostgreSQL, including enterprise backup and recovery, restore validation, high availability, disaster recovery planning, performance tuning, and platform modernization. Proven record of automating database operations, supporting 24/7 production services, leading disaster recovery testing, and executing controlled infrastructure changes with documented implementation and recovery procedures.

Database Administrator at Cymax Group Technologies (2022-09 – Present)

• Administer SQL Server 2025 instances in an Azure-hosted estate supporting production, staging, and development environments, including health monitoring, capacity management, patching, upgrades, and access control across approximately 10 TB of data.
• Designed and tested database backup and recovery procedures across Azure-hosted SQL Server environments, performing scheduled restore and failover tests to validate recoverability and support business continuity objectives.
• Automated database installation, patching, backup, and monitoring tasks using PowerShell, reducing instance build time from approximately four hours to under one hour while improving deployment consistency.
• Restored production database services following a cybersecurity incident by rebuilding SQL Server instances and recovering databases to the most recent available transaction.
• Implemented and maintained SQL Server security controls, including role-based access, least-privilege permissions, Transparent Data Encryption, data masking, and audit logging to protect sensitive production data.
• Led modernization migration of SQL Server instances from SQL Server 2016 to SQL Server 2025, planning and executing cutovers, validation, and rollback procedures for each move.
• Drove a data lifecycle and retention initiative, defining retention policies for date-based tables and purging or archiving 20 years (4 TB) of data to streamline operational data and reduce operating costs.
• Investigate production incidents and performance bottlenecks, coordinating with engineering, DevOps, and SRE teams and improving monitoring and alerting through Datadog and in-house tools.
• Assess database and infrastructure change risks, document implementation and rollback procedures, and coordinate controlled releases through development, test, and client-approved production environments.

Technical Advisor – Database at Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) (2002-10 – 2022-05)

• Administered SQL Server, SAP ASE, Db2 LUW/pureScale, Oracle, and PostgreSQL across nearly 200 servers on Windows, Unix, Linux, and Azure, supporting approximately 20,000 users.
• Maintained availability of national border-enforcement databases, including ICES, for 18,000+ officers and partners, safeguarding Protected B and Secret data in mission-critical 24/7 services.
• Served as Database Technical Lead on CBSA's disaster recovery team from 2010 to 2022, designing and executing DR test scenarios and validating backup, restore, and failover procedures against recovery time and recovery point objectives (RTO/RPO).
• Scheduled redundant on-site and off-site database backups using Tivoli Storage Manager and developed DBMS rebuild procedures to support disaster recovery, system restoration, and operational continuity.
• Developed and maintained database installation guides, disaster recovery procedures, rebuild instructions, design documents, and deployment guidelines to standardize operational practices and support repeatable system recovery.
• Restored service during national system outages by diagnosing root causes, recommending corrective actions, confirming recovery with clients, and documenting incident timelines and outcomes; provided 24/7 on-call support for production and QA.
• Tuned stored procedures, indexes, and instance configuration; benchmarked changes to improve query and load performance; corrected physical design issues and rebalanced data and log placement to remove storage bottlenecks.
• Built PowerShell and Bash automation for DBMS installation and monitoring, reducing installation time from approximately four hours to under one hour.
• Delivered platform modernization and migration initiatives, including Db2 pureScale on Linux, SAP database migration from Oracle to Sybase, Oracle-to-PostgreSQL, Oracle-to-SQL Server, and PostgreSQL-to-SQL Server migrations.
• Performed database and infrastructure change impact analysis, coordinated releases with application and infrastructure teams, and advised management on lower-risk implementation options, including a disk-array-to-SAN migration.
• Supported 17 complex IT projects of national scope, including four high-availability, mission-critical 24/7 systems; acted as project lead and mentored DBAs on standards, tools, and performance-tuning practices.

Information Technology Diploma – Algonquin College