Philip McClarence, Developer in Newcastle upon Tyne, United Kingdom
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Philip McClarence

Verified Expert  in Engineering

Database Developer

Newcastle upon Tyne, United Kingdom

Toptal member since July 25, 2022

Bio

Philip is an experienced database engineer and administrator (DBA) with over 20 years of experience. His primary focus is PostgreSQL, but he has worked with several other databases, including Oracle and the AWS suite. He has worked on every aspect of the database lifecycle, from designing and building greenfield projects to maintaining and tuning high throughput 24/7 systems and everything in between, including complex data migration projects.

Portfolio

Ori Industries
Database Administration (DBA), Kubernetes, CockroachDB, PostgreSQL, PostgREST...
DXC
Amazon RDS, Oracle, AWS CloudFormation, Amazon Web Services (AWS), PostgreSQL...
Turnitin
PostgreSQL, Terraform, Puppet, Amazon RDS, SQL Performance...

Experience

  • SQL - 20 years
  • Database Administration (DBA) - 12 years
  • PostgreSQL - 10 years
  • Oracle - 5 years
  • Amazon RDS - 5 years
  • Data Lakes - 2 years
  • Amazon DynamoDB - 2 years

Availability

Part-time

Preferred Environment

PostgreSQL, SQL, Amazon Aurora, Amazon RDS

The most amazing...

...project I've worked on saved clients money by migrating expensive Oracle systems to PostgreSQL.

Work Experience

Principal Database Engineer

2021 - 2022
Ori Industries
  • Designed and built the data systems to support the business.
  • Deployed PostgreSQL systems in Kubernetes environments and on AWS.
  • Worked with the various forms of replication in PostgreSQL.
  • Devised and created graph-database solutions in Neo4j.
Technologies: Database Administration (DBA), Kubernetes, CockroachDB, PostgreSQL, PostgREST, Neo4j, SQL Performance, Amazon Aurora, Database Optimization

Technology Consultant - Data

2020 - 2021
DXC
  • Worked directly with clients to learn requirements and translated them into solutions.
  • Delivered proof-of-concept systems to clients expecting to move to AWS.
  • Advised on and delivered Oracle to PostgreSQL migrations.
  • Used Amazon Aurora PostgreSQL and Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL in AWS.
  • Designed and implemented infrastructure as AWS CloudFormation templates.
Technologies: Amazon RDS, Oracle, AWS CloudFormation, Amazon Web Services (AWS), PostgreSQL, Amazon Aurora, Database Optimization

Senior Database Engineer

2014 - 2020
Turnitin
  • Ensured the health, performance, and availability of all databases within Turnitin and improved the databases' uptime, availability, and durability.
  • Reported to the director of operations to propose, design, and implement solutions that met the evolving data needs.
  • Managed, monitored, tuned, and ensured uptime and availability of several large-scale (multi-terabyte and high throughput), multi-node, always-on PostgreSQL clusters.
  • Researched, planned, and carried out database and cloud migrations—ensuring data consistency and uptime.
  • Used technologies such as Puppet, Terraform, Docker, and Kubernetes to automate database deployments, maximize uptime and simplify management.
  • Dealt with external vendors and consultants to add to in-house functions.
Technologies: PostgreSQL, Terraform, Puppet, Amazon RDS, SQL Performance, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Amazon Aurora, Database Optimization

Senior Database Administrator

2014 - 2014
Hewlett Packard Enterprise
  • Facilitated the administration of production databases in the DWP estate.
  • Mentored less experienced database administrators.
  • Ensured recoverability of databases and performed recoveries; responded to and resolved incidents.
Technologies: Oracle, SQL Performance, Database Optimization

Lead DBA - DWP Projects

2012 - 2014
Accenture
  • Led a team of DBAs working on the DWP projects at Accenture.
  • Improved the resiliency and manageability of the Oracle database estate.
  • Supervised workload and mentored other database administrators.
  • Managed team members in different countries and time zones.
  • Designed database monitoring systems and automated them to maximise performance and free up DBA time.
  • Devised and implemented backup and recovery strategies using Recovery Manager (RMAN) and import or export tools.
Technologies: Oracle, Database Optimization

A Data Mart Built Using the AWS Serverless Application Model

https://github.com/philmcc/AWS-SAM-datamart
A small project built to consume data from API endpoints with AWS Lambda functions which then loaded the data into an Amazon DynamoDB table. The data was then made available for analysis and consumption.

What I like most about this project is that the whole thing was created as one package of code and all of the resources needed in AWS.

The project is self-contained, can be spun up and down at will, and requires no manual steps or intervention to create an environment for it.
1997 - 2001

Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science

Northumbria University - Newcastle upon Tyne, UK

FEBRUARY 2021 - FEBRUARY 2024

AWS Certified Data Analytics Specialty

AWS

JANUARY 2021 - JANUARY 2024

AWS Certified Database Specialty

AWS

JUNE 2020 - JUNE 2023

AWS Certified Solutions Architect Associate

AWS

MAY 2014 - PRESENT

Oracle Certified Expert, Oracle Real Application Clusters 11g and Grid Infrastructure Administrator

Oracle

JANUARY 2014 - PRESENT

Oracle Database 11g Administrator Certified Professional

Oracle

JANUARY 2013 - PRESENT

Oracle Database 10g Administrator Certified Professional

Oracle

Libraries/APIs

PostgREST

Tools

Amazon Redshift Spectrum, AWS CloudFormation, AWS Glue, Terraform, Puppet

Languages

SQL, Python, Go, GraphQL

Paradigms

Database Development

Platforms

Amazon Web Services (AWS), Oracle, Kubernetes

Storage

PostgreSQL, Database Administration (DBA), SQL Performance, Database Architecture, Amazon Aurora, SQL Stored Procedures, SQL Triggers, Cassandra, MySQL Server, Redshift, Databases, Amazon DynamoDB, Data Lakes, MySQL, Neo4j, Oracle 11g, Oracle 10g, CockroachDB

Frameworks

AWS Serverless Application Model (SAM)

Other

Amazon RDS, Data Modeling, Data Architecture, Database Optimization, Apache Cassandra, MySQL DBA, GraphDB, PostGraphile, Programming, Hardware, AWS Lake Formation

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