Database Engineer – Journeyman at ASM Research
San Antonio, TX
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Jul 5, 2026
San Antonio, TX
Jul 20, 2026
What this job asks for AI summary
A mid-level database engineering role focused on designing and maintaining enterprise-scale database systems in a government/defense environment. Day-to-day work spans performance tuning, backup and recovery, high availability configurations, security controls, and automation of administrative tasks, as well as integrating databases with data pipelines and applications. Suits candidates with hands-on database engineering or administration experience who hold an active Secret clearance and meet DoD 8140 requirements.
Mid level · 4+ years · National · Secret clearance
“or” means any one of them counts — you don't need all of them.
Posted 3 times — it's one opening, so apply once.
We read this from the posting text with AI. Skim the description below before ruling yourself out.
How this req sits in the market our data
Most people in this occupation already list these. Still required — just not what gets you shortlisted.
What the occupation pays Median $106,921 (middle half $81,361–$138,439).
Estimated from BLS employment for this occupation and area, per-skill prevalence across our listing corpus, and published wage benchmarks — as of Jul 28, 2026. It is a model, not a headcount.
Why we read it this way (8)
The title 'Journeyman' maps to a mid-level band (4+ years required, independent delivery expected) rather than Senior, despite the role spanning both DBA operations and database design/architecture. The SOC is a close call between 15-1242 (Database Administrators, reflecting the heavy operational/DBA duties) and 15-1243 (Database Architects, reflecting the design and standards-setting responsibilities); 15-1242 was chosen as primary because the operational duties — backup/recovery, HA, monitoring, lifecycle support — dominate the responsibilities.
DoD 8140 compliance is listed as a hard requirement; this is a workforce framework mandate (formerly DoD 8570) common in federal/defense contracts and may require specific certifications depending on the role's assigned work role.
Active Secret clearance is explicitly required as a hard gate. U.S. citizenship is also required.
Bachelor's degree is listed as 'or equivalent experience,' so no minimum degree is flagged.
Cloud-managed databases (AWS RDS / Azure SQL), SQL/NoSQL breadth, and certifications appear under Preferred Qualifications only.
No compensation information was provided in the posting.
Ignored 1 non-technology phrase(s) as skills (responsibilities/concepts, not named tools): database design.
Requires a Secret clearance — the cleared population is a small fraction of this occupation, so the real candidate pool is materially smaller than the estimate below, which does not model clearance.
Read the full posting
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