Database developer job description templates for teams hiring without an engineering department: 6 role variants with pay benchmarks and DOCX downloads.
6 templates for companies hiring the person who owns their data layer: standard, junior, senior, SQL Server, PostgreSQL, and small business generalist. Pay benchmarks, classification notes, and DOCX downloads.
Most companies hire a database developer about two years after they needed one. The pattern is always the same: the application developers built the schema early, it worked, the business grew, and now a report takes ninety seconds, a migration is scheduled for a Saturday night, and nobody remembers why that table has four columns that are always null.
The postings written for that moment are usually wrong. They get copied from a company with a data team of eight, ask for a stack you do not run, and describe a specialist slot inside an organization you do not have. Then the applicants are either overqualified or fluent in keywords and nothing else, and neither outcome fixes the ninety-second report.
At FirstHR we write hiring templates for companies without an engineering department to hand this to. The six below cover a standard mid-level role, a junior, a senior, a SQL Server specialist, a PostgreSQL specialist, and the generalist a small business hires to sort out its whole data environment. Each one carries the classification and screening notes the generic versions leave out.
TL;DR
A database developer builds the data layer: schemas, stored procedures, query tuning, and migrations. That is different from a database administrator, who keeps it running. No BLS occupation carries the title, so benchmark between $100,390 and $139,500 at the national median. Six templates below, downloadable as DOCX.
What a Database Developer Actually Builds
A database developer produces code that lives inside the database: schemas, indexes, views, stored procedures, functions, and migration scripts. The job is to decide how data will be stored before a feature is built, then write and test the database side of that feature.
The second half of the job is performance. Reading an execution plan, understanding why the planner chose a scan over a seek, adding or reshaping an index, and rewriting a query so it does less work are the skills that separate someone who writes SQL from someone who owns a database. That distinction is invisible on a resume and obvious in a work sample.
The third piece is change. Databases in use cannot simply be rebuilt, so every schema change arrives as a migration that has to run on live data, in order, with a way back if it fails. Companies that hire a database developer late usually do so because a migration finally went wrong.
Write the Posting Around the Problem, Not the Title
Before you copy any template, name the thing that is actually costing you money. If features ship slowly because nobody owns the data model, you want a developer. If your risk is downtime, backups, and restores, you want an administrator. If your data is scattered across a dozen systems and none of them agree, you want a data engineer. Small companies often need one person doing two of these, which works fine if you say so in the posting and pay for the scope rather than discovering it in month three.
Developer, Administrator, Engineer, or Architect
These four data roles get used interchangeably in job postings and mean four different things in practice. The shortest test is build, run, move, or plan: a developer builds the data layer, an administrator runs it, an engineer moves data between systems, and an architect plans what should exist.
Database developer
Builds the data layer
Designs schemas, writes and tunes SQL, builds stored procedures and migrations, and models data for new features. The output is code that lives inside the database. Hire this role when the database is where your product logic actually sits.
Database administrator
Runs the data layer
Owns uptime, backups, restores, patching, capacity, replication, and security of the running instance. The output is a database that stays up and recovers. Hire this role when your risk is downtime and data loss rather than slow feature delivery.
Data engineer
Moves data between systems
Builds pipelines that pull from many sources into a warehouse, usually across a distributed stack rather than one relational database. Hire this role when the problem is getting data out of ten systems, not making one system fast.
Data architect
Decides the shape of everything
Sets the target state: which systems exist, how they relate, what the standards are, and what gets retired. Mostly a role for companies large enough to have several data teams whose choices need to be reconciled.
Getting this wrong is expensive in a specific way. A strong administrator hired to do development work will keep your database up and will not make your features ship faster, and a strong developer hired to be the administrator will resent the pager. If you need both and can afford one person, say that plainly in the posting and read our database administrator templates alongside these.
Role
Core question it answers
Hire it when
Database developer
How should this data be shaped and queried?
Features ship slowly and the data model has no owner
Database administrator
Will the database stay up and recover?
Downtime, backups, patching, or restores are the real risk
Data engineer
How does data get from there to here?
Data lives in a dozen systems that do not agree
Data architect
What should the whole data estate look like?
Several data teams are making conflicting decisions
Back end developer
How does the application behave?
The bottleneck is application code, not the database
A database developer posting does four jobs: it describes your environment concretely enough for a specialist to judge it, it filters out keyword matches, it protects you legally, and it closes the candidate. Most postings only attempt the last one, which is why they draw volume and not fit.
The parts a developer reads first
The database platform and version, stated exactly
Data volume, transaction rate, or table count
Whether the database is the product or the back office
Who else touches the schema today
The parts that filter applicants
Years of production SQL on your platform
Query tuning experience, described concretely
Migration experience on systems that stay online
The reporting and integration tools already in place
The parts that protect you
FLSA classification stated on the posting
Essential functions written plainly
Equal opportunity statement
Confidentiality and data access expectations
The parts that close the hire
A real salary range, not a placeholder
Remote, hybrid, or on-site, without ambiguity
What autonomy the role actually carries
A named person and a real timeline to apply
The single most common omission is the environment. Database people want the engine, the version, the rough data volume, and whether they will be the only specialist. Leaving that out reads as a company that has not looked at its own systems, and the strongest candidates skip those postings. Our guide to writing a job description covers the general structure, and the hiring templates library has the rest of the technical roles.
6 Database Developer Job Description Templates to Download
Download all six as one file or copy them individually. Each follows the same structure: company overview, position summary, key responsibilities, required qualifications, a classification and compliance note, an equal opportunity statement, and how to apply. The bracketed fields are the only parts you need to change.
Download All 6 Database Developer Job Description Templates
Standard, junior, senior, SQL Server, PostgreSQL, and small business generalist. All in one download.
Standard Database Developer
Mid-level, platform neutral
The general role: schema design, stored procedures, query tuning, migrations, and data modeling alongside application developers.
Junior / Entry-Level
Supervised, with a mentor named
For a first technical hire at the start of a career, with the review structure written in and an honest note on when a junior is non-exempt.
Senior Database Developer
Owns the model and the standards
For the person who sets standards, leads the hard performance work, runs live migrations, and mentors everyone else on database practice.
SQL Server / T-SQL
Microsoft stack specifics
For a Microsoft environment: T-SQL, execution plans, integration packages, reporting, and the vendor application schema you inherited.
PostgreSQL / Open Source
Product-facing workloads
For a company whose product runs on Postgres: EXPLAIN ANALYZE, index selection, zero-downtime migrations, and extension experience.
Small Business Generalist
One person, whole environment
For a business with no IT department: consolidate scattered systems, automate the manual exports, build the reports, and document all of it.
Template 1: Standard Database Developer
The general mid-level role, platform neutral: schema design, stored procedures, query tuning, migrations, and data modeling alongside application developers.
For an early-career hire, with the mentorship structure written in and an honest note on when a junior technical role is non-exempt rather than assumed exempt.
For the person who owns the data model, sets the standards, leads the hard performance work, runs live migrations, and mentors everyone else on database practice.
FLSA status: Exempt (computer employee exemption; see classification note)
Compensation: $_ to $_ per year
ABOUT THIS ROLE
[Company Name] runs [describe scale: number of tables, data volume, transaction
rate, number of dependent systems], and the data model now decides how fast we
can ship. We are hiring a senior database developer to own that model, set the
standards, and take the hardest performance and design problems.
POSITION SUMMARY
The Senior Database Developer owns the design of our data model, sets the
standards other developers follow, leads the difficult performance and migration
work, and mentors the rest of the team on database practice.
KEY RESPONSIBILITIES
•Own the data model: design new areas and refactor the ones that are hurting us
•Set and enforce standards for naming, indexing, migrations, and review
•Lead performance work: profiling, execution plan analysis, index strategy,
partitioning, and query rewrites on the systems that matter most
•Plan and execute schema migrations on live systems with a rollback path
•Review the database work of other developers and raise the floor
•Partner with [application / analytics / platform] teams on data contracts
•Evaluate and recommend database technology decisions with written tradeoffs
•Mentor junior and mid-level developers on modeling and tuning
•Own data integrity, access control, and retention practice for the data layer
REQUIRED QUALIFICATIONS
•[Number]+ years of production database development on [platform]
•Deep modeling experience across [transactional and analytical] workloads
•Track record of measurable performance work you can describe in numbers
•Experience running migrations on systems that could not go offline
•Experience mentoring other developers and reviewing their work
•Ability to explain a technical tradeoff to a non-technical decision maker
PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS
•Experience across more than one database engine
•[Data warehouse / dimensional modeling / replication / high availability]
•Experience being the most senior database person in a small company
CLASSIFICATION AND COMPLIANCE NOTE
A senior database developer at this level clears both parts of the FLSA computer
employee exemption comfortably, because the primary duty is the design,
development, and modification of computer programs and systems and the pay is
well above the $684 per week floor. Two things still deserve care. First, if the
role includes managing people, review whether the executive exemption is the
better fit and document the reporting line. Second, several states set a higher
computer professional pay threshold than the federal one and adjust it every
year, so confirm the state rule where the person will work. This is general
information, not legal advice.
EEO STATEMENT
[Company Name] is an equal opportunity employer and provides reasonable
accommodations for the essential functions of this role.
COMPENSATION AND HOW TO APPLY
Compensation: $_ to $_ per year, [bonus], [equity], [benefits]
To apply, email __ with your resume and a description of a
data model you designed and would now change.
Template 4: SQL Server Database Developer
For a Microsoft environment: T-SQL, execution plans, integration packages, reporting, and the vendor application schema you inherited rather than designed.
SQL Server Database Developer Job Description (T-SQL)
For a company whose product runs on Postgres, with EXPLAIN ANALYZE fluency, deliberate index selection, and zero-downtime migrations as the core requirements.
FLSA status: Exempt (computer employee exemption; see classification note)
Compensation: $_ to $_ per year
ABOUT THIS ROLE
[Company Name] builds [product] on PostgreSQL [version], running on [managed
service / self-hosted]. The database is not a back office system here, it is the
product: [describe the workload, for example multi-tenant transactional data,
time-series telemetry, or a search-heavy catalog]. We are hiring a database
developer who works at that level.
POSITION SUMMARY
The PostgreSQL Database Developer designs schemas and writes the SQL and
procedural code behind product features, tunes queries against real production
workloads, and owns migrations on a database that cannot go offline.
KEY RESPONSIBILITIES
•Design schemas and write the SQL behind product features
•Write and test [PL/pgSQL] functions where they belong, and push back where
they do not
•Read EXPLAIN ANALYZE output and act on it: indexes, rewrites, planner behavior
•Choose and apply index types deliberately [B-tree, GIN, GiST, partial]
•Plan and run zero-downtime migrations on live tables
•Design for [partitioning / row-level security / logical replication] where the
workload calls for it
•Work with application developers on how queries are generated and called
•Monitor query performance and set the alerts that catch regressions early
•Keep the data model documented and legible to the whole team
REQUIRED QUALIFICATIONS
•[Number] years of PostgreSQL in production, not just as an application
developer who wrote occasional queries
•Fluency with EXPLAIN ANALYZE and practical index selection
•Experience running migrations without taking the system down
•Understanding of MVCC, vacuum behavior, and transaction isolation
•Comfort in a codebase written in [language]
PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS
•Experience with [extension: PostGIS, pgvector, TimescaleDB]
•Replication, failover, or high availability experience
•Contributions to open-source database tooling
•Experience as the first database specialist at a small company
CLASSIFICATION AND COMPLIANCE NOTE
This role fits the FLSA computer employee exemption: the primary duty is the
design, development, testing, and modification of computer programs, and the pay
test of $684 per week or $27.63 per hour is met at any realistic market rate.
For remote hires, classification and pay rules follow the state where the
employee actually works, not where your company is registered, and several
states set a higher computer professional threshold and adjust it annually.
Confirm before the offer letter goes out. This is general information, not legal
advice.
EEO STATEMENT
[Company Name] is an equal opportunity employer and provides reasonable
accommodations for the essential functions of this role.
COMPENSATION AND HOW TO APPLY
Compensation: $_ to $_ per year, [bonus], [equity], [benefits]
To apply, email __ with your resume and a note on a query
or migration you are proud of.
Template 6: Small Business Generalist Database Developer
For a business with no IT department: consolidate scattered systems, automate the manual exports, build the recurring reports, and document all of it. If the scope is closer to pipelines than to schema design, use the data engineer templates instead.
Small Business Database Developer Job Description (Generalist)
DATABASE DEVELOPER JOB DESCRIPTION (SMALL BUSINESS GENERALIST)
Company: __ ([City, State])
Reports to: [Owner / Operations Lead / IT Manager]
FLSA status: Depends on the actual split of duties (see classification note)
Compensation: $_ per [year / hour]
ABOUT THIS ROLE
[Company Name] is a [size and industry] business in [City, State]. We do not
have an engineering department. Our data sits across [the accounting system, the
[industry] software, several spreadsheets, and a database somebody built years
ago], and none of it talks to the rest. We are hiring one person to fix that and
then keep it working.
POSITION SUMMARY
The Database Developer builds and maintains the databases and data connections
this business runs on: cleaning up what exists, building what is missing,
automating the manual exports, and producing the reports the owner and the
managers need to make decisions.
KEY RESPONSIBILITIES
•Take inventory of where our data currently lives and document it
•Design and build a database that consolidates [the systems that matter]
•Write the queries, views, and procedures that feed our reporting
•Build automated data transfers between [system A] and [system B] to replace
the manual export and import someone does every [week]
•Clean up and standardize existing data, including duplicates and bad records
•Build [number] recurring reports and the [dashboard] the managers use
•Set up backups and verify that a restore actually works
•Manage access so people see the data appropriate to their role
•Document everything so this business is not dependent on one person
REQUIRED QUALIFICATIONS
•Solid SQL and relational modeling on [any mainstream database platform]
•Experience integrating systems that were never designed to talk to each other
•Comfort working without a technical manager and setting your own priorities
•Ability to explain technical options to a non-technical owner in plain English
•Discipline to document as you go
•Experience with [our accounting system / our [industry] software] preferred
SCOPE NOTE (be honest here)
This is a generalist role at a company without an IT department. Some weeks are
design and development. Some weeks are cleaning up data, answering questions,
and fixing something that broke. If you want a narrow specialist role inside a
large engineering organization, this is not it. If you want to own an entire data
environment and see your work used the same day, it is.
CLASSIFICATION AND COMPLIANCE NOTE
Classify this role on the real split of the week, not the title. The FLSA
computer employee exemption requires that the primary duty be systems analysis
or the design, development, testing, or modification of computer programs, plus
pay of at least $684 per week on a salary or fee basis or at least $27.63 per
hour. A generalist role that is mostly data entry, running existing reports, and
help-desk support does not meet the duties test and is non-exempt, which means
tracked hours and overtime past forty in a week. If you engage this person as a
contractor, apply the economic reality factors honestly: setting the schedule,
the tools, the location, and the method points toward an employee, and
misclassification is expensive to unwind. This is general information, not legal
advice.
EEO STATEMENT
[Company Name] is an equal opportunity employer and provides reasonable
accommodations for the essential functions of this role.
COMPENSATION AND HOW TO APPLY
Compensation: $_ per [year / hour], [benefits summary], [hours per week]
To apply, email __ with your resume and a short description
of a messy data situation you cleaned up.
Overtime and the Computer Employee Exemption
A database developer is usually exempt from overtime under the FLSA computer employee exemption, but the exemption has two halves and both have to hold. The duties must be genuine development work, and the pay must clear either $684 per week on a salary or fee basis or $27.63 per hour.
That hourly alternative is what makes this exemption unusual. It appears in the federal regulation on computer employees as exempt professionals and is explained in the Department of Labor fact sheet on computer-related occupations. No other white-collar exemption lets an hourly worker be exempt, and it is the reason an hourly contract database developer can sit outside overtime while an hourly worker in almost any other function cannot.
The computer exemption has its own pay test
Most exempt roles clear a single weekly salary floor. Computer employees have a second door: the federal rule allows either at least $684 per week on a salary or fee basis, or at least $27.63 per hour. That hourly alternative exists nowhere else in the white-collar exemptions, and it is what makes an hourly contract database developer able to be exempt while an hourly warehouse worker never is. Both routes still require the duties test. The pay test is a floor you must clear, not evidence that the duties are met, and clearing it while doing data entry buys you nothing. Confirm both halves before you write a classification into the posting. This is general information, not legal advice.
The duties test is about building, not using
The exemption reaches employees whose primary duty is systems analysis, or the design, development, documentation, analysis, creation, testing, or modification of computer systems or programs based on user or system design specifications. A database developer writing schemas, procedures, and migrations sits squarely inside that. Someone whose week is entering records, running reports built by other people, and answering access requests does not, no matter what the business card says. The rule also expressly excludes workers whose jobs are highly dependent on computers but who are not primarily engaged in systems analysis or programming. Write down what the week actually looks like, then classify. This is general information, not legal advice.
States can raise the bar, and several do
The federal thresholds are a floor, not a ceiling. Several states set a substantially higher pay threshold for computer professionals and adjust it every year, and a few apply narrower duties tests than the federal rule. Two consequences for a small employer. First, a role that is exempt in one state can be non-exempt in another at the same salary, which matters the moment you hire remotely. Second, the rule that applies is the one where the employee actually performs the work, not where the company is incorporated. Check the current figure with the state labor agency before the offer letter, because these numbers move annually and a stale spreadsheet is not a defense. This is general information, not legal advice.
Contract database work is a misclassification hot spot
Database projects invite contractor arrangements: the work looks finite, the skill is specialized, and hiring an employee feels heavy for a three-month schema cleanup. Sometimes that is genuinely a contractor engagement. Often it is not. If you set the hours, supply the tools and the accounts, direct the method, review the work continuously, and keep renewing the arrangement indefinitely, the economic reality points to an employee whatever the invoice says. The cost of getting it wrong is back taxes, unpaid overtime, penalties, and benefit exposure, all assessed after the fact. Decide the relationship honestly before the work starts, and put it in writing. This is general information, not legal advice.
The duties test is where small employers slip. It reaches systems analysis and the design, development, testing, or modification of computer systems and programs, and it expressly excludes people whose work merely depends on computers. A role that drifted into report running and access requests has drifted out of the exemption, which means tracked hours and overtime paid past forty in a week. Our breakdown of exempt versus non-exempt classification walks through the tests in order.
What to Pay a Database Developer
No Bureau of Labor Statistics occupation is titled database developer, so there is no single figure to quote. Benchmark against the nearest classifications instead, which bracket the role roughly between $100,000 and $140,000 at the national median depending on how much design ownership the job carries.
Nearest National Benchmarks
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics survey (May 2025), median annual wages were $104,620 for database administrators, $139,500 for database architects, $135,980 for software developers, and $100,390 for computer programmers. The database administrator range runs from $60,230 at the tenth percentile to $163,320 at the ninetieth, and the database architect range from $86,240 to $204,000 (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, OEWS national estimates).
Nearest BLS classification
Median (BLS OEWS, May 2025)
When it is the right benchmark
Computer programmers
$100,390 per year
Implementation-weighted roles working to someone else’s design
Database administrators
$104,620 per year
Mixed build and run roles at a small company
Software developers
$135,980 per year
Product-facing database work shipped on a release cycle
Database architects
$139,500 per year
Senior roles that design the data model from scratch
Two adjustments matter more than the national medians. Geography is the first: the same role prices very differently in a major metro than in a smaller market, and a remote posting competes against the higher of the two. Scope is the second. A generalist who owns modeling, tuning, integrations, reporting, and backups is doing several jobs, and a range set from a narrow specialist posting will not close that hire.
For context on the market you are hiring into, the Bureau of Labor Statistics projects employment of database administrators and architects to grow 4 percent from 2024 to 2034, about as fast as the average across all occupations, with roughly 7,800 openings projected each year. That is a steady market rather than a frantic one, which means a well-specified posting and a fast process beat a large budget. Publish a good-faith range wherever pay transparency laws apply.
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Screening a Database Developer Without a Technical Team
Screen with a work sample, not a quiz. Give the candidate a small, deliberately messy extract that resembles your real data, ask them to model it and write two or three queries a manager would want, and have them narrate the decisions.
You are not grading syntax. You are listening for three signals a non-technical owner can absolutely read: whether they asked what the business question was before writing anything, whether they can explain the model in plain language, and whether they caught the data quality problem you planted in the file. A candidate who does all three will be fine. One who does none will be expensive.
What to ask
Weak answer
Strong answer
Walk me through a slow query you fixed
Describes the tools used, in adjectives
Names the cause, the change, and the before and after timings
How would you model this data?
Starts drawing tables immediately
Asks what questions the data has to answer first
How do you change a schema on a live system?
Talks about a maintenance window
Describes a reversible migration and how it was tested
What did you notice about this sample file?
Nothing, or only formatting
Finds the duplicates, nulls, or broken references you planted
Explain this model to a non-technical manager
Uses jargon and keeps going
Explains it in business terms without being asked to
Access Comes Before Day One, Not During Week One
A database developer gets deeper access than almost anyone else you hire: production credentials, cloud consoles, source control, and often direct sight of customer and financial records. Confidentiality and intellectual property agreements should be signed before any of it is granted, not chased down afterward. Decide who owns each grant, sequence it against the start date, and make sure the same list runs in reverse when someone leaves. An orphaned production credential is the kind of problem you only discover during an audit or an incident.
Hiring a Database Developer Without an HR Department
Technical hiring at a company without HR fails in three predictable places: nobody on staff can evaluate the candidate, the posting describes someone else's company, and the access paperwork lands in a scramble during week one. Each has a fix that does not require hiring an engineering manager first.
Nobody at your company can evaluate a database developer
This is the honest starting position at most small businesses. The owner or the operations lead is writing the posting, and no one on staff can tell a strong index strategy from a weak one. Credentials will not rescue you, because certifications test recall rather than judgment. A work sample will. Hand the candidate a small, deliberately messy version of your real data and ask for a model plus two or three queries a manager would want, then have them walk you through the decisions. You are not grading the SQL line by line. You are listening for three things: did they ask what the business question was, can they explain the model in plain language, and did they notice the data quality problem you left in the file. Those signals separate a strong hire from a weak one better than any resume, and any non-technical owner can read them.
The posting describes a job that does not exist at your company
The most common failure is copying a posting written for a company with an engineering department. It asks for distributed systems experience, names a warehouse platform you do not run, and describes a specialist slot inside a data team of eight. Then the applicants who arrive are either overqualified and leaving in a year, or they claim every keyword and cannot do the actual work. State your reality instead: the platform and version, the data volume, the fact that this person will be the only database specialist, and the mix of design work against cleanup work. A specific posting attracts fewer applicants and better ones. It also sets expectations that survive the first month, which is when a mismatched technical hire quietly starts looking again.
A database hire needs credentials on day one and nobody owns that list
This role needs deeper access than almost any other hire: production database credentials, cloud console accounts, source control, monitoring tools, and often direct visibility into customer or financial records. All of it should sit behind signed confidentiality and intellectual property agreements, and the sequence tends to fall apart at a company without an HR function, becoming a scramble of one-off requests across three people during the new hire’s first week. FirstHR was built for exactly that sequence. The onboarding wizard runs the same steps for every technical hire, e-signature handles the confidentiality and IP agreements before day one, task workflows assign each access grant to whoever owns that system, document management keeps the signed agreements on the employee profile, and offboarding runs the same list in reverse so no credential outlives the employment. Applicant tracking is coming soon to FirstHR.
Once the offer is signed, the work becomes a repeatable onboarding checklist, and for technical hires specifically our guide to developer onboarding covers the sequence from agreements through the first shipped change.
Key Takeaways
A database developer builds the data layer (schemas, stored procedures, query tuning, migrations) while a database administrator keeps it running, and hiring the wrong one solves a problem you do not have.
No BLS occupation is titled database developer, so benchmark against database administrators at $104,620, computer programmers at $100,390, software developers at $135,980, and database architects at $139,500 (BLS OEWS, May 2025).
The FLSA computer employee exemption needs both halves: development duties plus either $684 per week on a salary or fee basis or $27.63 per hour, and an operational role fails the duties test whatever the pay.
Several states set a higher computer professional pay threshold and adjust it annually, and the governing rule is the one where the employee actually works, which matters the moment you hire remotely.
State the engine, the version, the data volume, and whether this person is the only database specialist, because vague postings attract keyword matches rather than specialists.
Screen with a small messy work sample instead of a technical quiz, and listen for business questions, plain-language explanation, and whether the candidate caught the data quality problem you planted.
A database hire needs more system access than almost any other role, and at a company without HR that provisioning turns into a week-one scramble. FirstHR runs the same onboarding sequence every time, with e-signature for confidentiality and IP agreements before day one, task workflows that assign each access grant to the person who owns that system, and document storage tied to the employee profile so nothing outlives the employment. Applicant tracking is coming soon to FirstHR.
Frequently Asked Questions
What does a database developer do?
A database developer builds the data layer of a system: schemas, tables, indexes, views, stored procedures, functions, and the SQL that applications and reports depend on. The day-to-day work is designing how data will be stored before a feature is built, writing and testing the database code that implements it, tuning slow queries by reading execution plans and reshaping indexes, and writing migration scripts that change a live schema without losing data. Many database developers also build the jobs that move data between systems. The distinguishing feature against neighboring roles is that the output is code living inside the database rather than an operational service level. If your problem is that features ship slowly because nobody owns the data model, this is the role you are hiring. If your problem is downtime and restores, you want a database administrator instead.
What is the difference between a database developer and a database administrator?
A database developer builds the data layer and a database administrator runs it. The developer designs schemas, writes stored procedures and queries, tunes SQL, and scripts migrations; the output is database code that ships with your features. The administrator owns uptime, backups, verified restores, patching, capacity planning, replication, and access security; the output is a database that stays available and recovers when something goes wrong. At a large company these are separate people with separate on-call expectations. At a small company one person frequently does both, which is fine as long as you say so in the posting and price the role accordingly, because a candidate who expected pure development work and inherits a pager tends to leave. Decide which problem is actually costing you money right now, then write the posting for that one and list the other as secondary.
How much should I pay a database developer?
No Bureau of Labor Statistics occupation is titled database developer, so benchmark against the nearest classifications. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics survey (May 2025), median annual wages were $104,620 for database administrators, $139,500 for database architects, $135,980 for software developers, and $100,390 for computer programmers. That brackets a mid-level database developer roughly between $100,000 and $140,000 at the national median, depending on how much design ownership the role carries and how close the database sits to the product. The database administrator range runs from $60,230 at the tenth percentile to $163,320 at the ninetieth, which is the practical spread for junior through senior. Adjust for geography, since a remote posting competes against the higher-paying market, and publish a good-faith range wherever pay transparency rules apply.
Is a database developer exempt from overtime?
Usually yes, under the FLSA computer employee exemption, but you have to check both halves of the test. The pay test is met at either $684 per week on a salary or fee basis or at least $27.63 per hour, which is unusual because no other white-collar exemption offers an hourly route. The duties test requires that the primary duty be systems analysis or the design, development, documentation, analysis, creation, testing, or modification of computer systems or programs based on user or system design specifications. A database developer writing schemas, procedures, and migrations meets that. Someone whose week is data entry, running reports built by others, and handling access requests does not, and is non-exempt regardless of pay. Several states set a higher computer professional pay threshold and adjust it annually, and the rule that governs is the one where the employee actually works. This is general information, not legal advice.
Do I need a database developer or a data engineer?
It depends on whether your problem is inside one database or spread across many systems. Hire a database developer when a single relational database is the center of gravity: the schema needs design, the queries are slow, migrations are risky, and the application depends on database code that nobody owns. Hire a data engineer when the problem is getting data out of a dozen sources into one place, building and scheduling pipelines, and standing up a warehouse for analytics. The skills overlap in SQL and modeling but diverge sharply after that: database developers go deep on one engine, execution plans, and transactional design, while data engineers go broad on orchestration, distributed processing, and cloud data platforms. Most small companies need the developer first, because the transactional database is what the business already runs on and the warehouse is a later problem.
How do I screen a database developer without a technical team?
Use a work sample instead of a technical interview you cannot grade. Give the candidate a small, deliberately messy extract resembling your real data, ask them to model it and write two or three queries a manager would actually want, and have them talk you through the choices out loud. You are not evaluating the SQL syntax. You are listening for whether they asked what the business question was before writing anything, whether they can explain the model in language a non-technical owner understands, and whether they caught the data quality problem you planted in the file. Ask a second question about a slow query they fixed and listen for measurement rather than adjectives: a strong candidate names the before and after numbers. Bring in a technical advisor for one hour on the finalist if you have access to one. Applicant tracking is coming soon to FirstHR.
Should a small business hire a database developer full-time or on contract?
Start by asking whether the work ends. A one-time consolidation project, a schema cleanup, or a reporting build is genuinely finite and suits a contract engagement. Ongoing ownership of a data model that changes every time you ship a feature is a role, not a project, and pretending otherwise produces a contractor you renew indefinitely and a misclassification exposure that grows the whole time. The economic reality factors matter here: if you set the hours, supply the accounts and tools, direct the method, and supervise the work continuously, that relationship looks like employment regardless of what the invoice says. A reasonable middle path for a small business is a fixed-scope contract for the initial cleanup with a defined deliverable, then a part-time employee arrangement for maintenance once you know how much work the environment actually generates.
