Oracle DBA Job

[ascetic1298]

hello everyone,

i happened to check out this forum and I must say that people at this forum sound very friendly. So I am quite encouraged to post my little queries here looking for some thoughtful advices.

I am a certified Oracle DBA with 9i and later upgraded to 10g. I have an expert level certification on managing Oracle on Linux platform and another professional level certification with Oracle Application server 10g R2 administration. I have in all more than 6 yrs of full term work experience with big MNC mostly in telecom and banking domain.

So I wanna know how much of this experience and credentials can help me find a suitable job in NZ. How much starting salary can i expect and how easy/difficult would it be to get a job, to begin with.

thanks in advance!

[Chiba]

Your mileage may vary, but when I was looking around for Oracle jobs a year or so ago I found very few. Oracle gets used by big corporates, and there just aren't that many to choose from in NZ. As a DBA though, you can try contracting, although the immigration rules say you have to have been contracting already. As for me, I'm back in Microsoft land, but hands off doing management. Good luck with your job hunting!

[DMcG]

I second what Chiba has said. I'm an ex-oracle consultant and had problems finding a pure oracle position when I arrived five years ago. There are very few organisations large enough to be able to support platform specific DBAs. Most companies looking for a DBA will require a variety of skills - but you may manage to get lucky. One other possibility is to try the consultancy companies, there's a few large ones around like EDS and Gen-i as well as numerous smaller ones.

Region wise, you'll need to stick to the big cities, so Wellington, Auckland or Christchurch. Salary wise, I would expect around $80K to $100K depending on skillset and the company.

Oracle themselves have offices in Wellington and Auckland - but I don't know what the consulant quotient is.

Dougie

[ascetic1298]

thanks very much for your thoughts. going thru the seek website i was actually wondering why most of the dba jobs asks for SQL server skills and not Oracle. Now I understand tht there are not many large companies who can probably afford the massive oracle licensing fee. I have a friend at eds, nz and he was telling me that they have advertized for an oracle dba jobs for months but cudn;t get a suitable candidate so far. so as the demand for oracle skills might be low is the supply also far lower for oracle professionals. Does that mean oracle skills are not very popular in NZ.

[DMcG]

It's a chicken and egg scenario.

There aren't many companies using Oracle so the demand for skilled Oracle DBAs is much lower than in the UK. Because of that, there are fewer opportunities to gain Oracle skills, so for companies who are using Oracle, the chance of getting a skilled DBA is fairly slim - skilled immigrants are usually their best bet.

There are much fewer companies around in NZ that can afford to run their applications on Oracle, when they will probably run just as well on (the much cheaper) SQL Server given the scale of their operations.

Dougie

[ascetic1298]

hmm.... understood!

any idea if NZ is preferred by some countries a favorable off shore location for getting the work done like in india and china. SO is there a possibility that some of the big companies like eds do not necessarily work for the local market yet employ some off market skills professionals as they are involved in some support stuff or something for outside NZ clients.

[DMcG]

I'm not aware of anything like that here. Staff costs in NZ are certainly less than for Australia, but NZ is still an expensive place for hosting remote staff, in comparison to other Aisa-Pacific countries (with the exception of Oz).

If you're trying to get into the country on a WTR, it may be worth considering a lesser Oracle role that offers a chance to upskill with something like SQL Server or Sybase. This would greatly improve your marketability within NZ. On the other hand - you may get lucky and find a decent Oracle role straight off.

Seek seems to have a few Oracle positions listed (although some of them are obviously the same job).

Dougie

[incredible hulse]

You could try these guys who do a fair bit of work for some of the larger companies in Welly http://www.redrock.net.au/_content/home/index.html

[ascetic1298]

thanks so much for such a valuable link.

i must tell u that this is actually the kind of roles i had in mind for sometime.
red rock really seems promising.

[ascetic1298]

I'm not aware of anything like that here. Staff costs in NZ are certainly less than for Australia, but NZ is still an expensive place for hosting remote staff, in comparison to other Aisa-Pacific countries (with the exception of Oz).

If you're trying to get into the country on a WTR, it may be worth considering a lesser Oracle role that offers a chance to upskill with something like SQL Server or Sybase. This would greatly improve your marketability within NZ. On the other hand - you may get lucky and find a decent Oracle role straight off.

Seek seems to have a few Oracle positions listed (although some of them are obviously the same job).

Dougie

to be honest i wud never want to work with sybase/MS sql server. i understand that variety on resume may have more chances of getting a hit. however, a complete change of line is not thinkable atleast for now. I have already shifted partially from completely db centric tasks to more of a middle tier support but all of this is involved in oracle technologies like Oracle Apps server and now SOA. It wud be really hard for me to cross over to other field, just to beg a job offer in NZ.