Hiring a Full Time DBA vs a Managed Database Administration Firm
Things to consider before hiring your first Full Time Database Administrator.
GREAT NEWS EVERYONE 
Your company is growing.
You’ve got data coming out the ears.
Then it happens
Your Sysadmin/DevOps (correctly) say “I’m out of my depth” or “I have no bandwidth to address this.”
Before you go to the CFO for budget approval take a deep breath and answer these questions:
- How much work do I actually have for a Database Administrator?
- Can I afford an expert, or will I be hiring an entry-level DBA?
- If the DBA gets sick or goes on vacation who will be monitoring and managing the data?
- If they leave us suddenly for a better offer, how long will it take me to refill the position?
- What skillsets do I want the full-time employee to have?
Your data needs Scalability, Data Architecture, Data Warehousing, Master Data Management, Performance and Tuning, Analysis, and Interoperability. Most DBAs can only do a few of these things.
Unfortunately, most companies just cannot budget for everything they need in an FTE. Instead, they must ‘make do’ with an entry level data engineer who took a few classes in POWER BI (Business Intelligence) and Architecture but have minimal real-world knowledge.
That is where a Database Managed Services Firm like Soaring Eagle Data Solutions in Tampa, FL comes in.
You get an entire team of database experts. 
If your primary is on vacation/sick/unavailable, there are still people on hand for routine and emergency matters who have a runbook and the experience necessary to keep your business running. If you need help in an area your primary is not expert, we always have somebody else who gets it and can be made available.
Full Operational Database Managed Services keeps your company ready to scale at a moment's notice, maximizes uptime, and reduces the workload on the in-house team.
Be honest and ask yourself: Is it better to have an entire team of Database Experts, or just one Data Engineer?
Full operational remote database managed services comes at a fraction of the cost of a full-time employee. Why?
Many companies that hire their first DBA do not need 40 hours of work every week. Often, there are 5-10 hours a week of work, plus emergencies. Everything else can be done as a one off project, you won't need to do a Data Migration every week, right?
The lesson:
Do NOT assume a full-time employee (no matter how talented) can handle all the disparate skillsets required to manage data properly.
Do NOT hire an employee until you have positively identified the skillsets required and the amount of work you have for them.
DO get bids from database managed services firms like Soaring Eagle Data Solutions in Tampa, Florida.
DO discuss with in-house teams what their needs and objectives are, and align any hires or vendor onboarding with the required skillsets to keep your company successul.
