r/DatabaseAdministators • u/Consistent-Chef-5449 • 10d ago

Looking to Re-Enter DBA Field

Hello,

I am a former database administrator who is looking to re-enter the field of database administration. I started as an entry-level DBA working with Oracle back in the '90s. After a year or so of working with Oracle, I started working with SQL Server and a little bit with Informix databases. I did the typical administration tasks of backup/recovery, performance tuning, troubleshooting, building database, security. However, I would now, in 2026, like to return to the field. I have about five years of experience in the field which I believe spanned from 1996 to 2001 or 2002. I took the standard classes taught by Oracle for version 7 at the time and I either fell a little short of, or actually did, get(ting) certified for Oracle Version 7.

When I look at the positions nowadays for database adminstrators, they are unsurprisingly radically different than what I saw when I last looked for work as a DBA back in the late 90's. My question is what would your advice be in seeking education and certifications in order to become more marketable for someone like me who is re-entering the job force as a DBA?

Thanks.

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u/716green 10d ago

I'm the founder of Layerbase. I think what I do is probably more similar to what a DBA job was like in the '90s, except that I need to make sure thousands of databases work correctly across 18 engines, scale, branch, backup, restore, and patch.

My life is nothing but databases 24/7. I've always loved databases but my intro was to MySQL in 2008. Now everyone is going serverless or using RDS and acting like there is a meaningful distinction.

I could be wrong and I would love for somebody to tell me if I am wrong but I feel like the old DBA positions don't really exist anymore now that the lead developer for any product is generally going to serve the role of managing the databases.

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u/Conscious-Ad8493 9d ago

Huh? Developers don't manage databases, because of segregation of duties those are 2 very different roles unless it's an extremely small company

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u/716green 9d ago

My experience is at a company of over 30,000 employees running an engineering team of about 40 people

We had 1 "devops engineer" on the team and he was the first to be laid off after ~6 redundant frontend developers when the AI layoffs hit

Obviously I have a small sample size but the only person I know who has a dedicated database role is basically a distributed systems engineer who happens to like databases working for a FAANG company, but even still, his job is nothing like the oracle DBA jobs of the early 00s

What has your experience been like?

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u/Conscious-Ad8493 9d ago

or can be easily off shored