United Kingdom · Technology and data · Lead (8-12 years)

Lead Cloud Database Administrator

Here is the whole job, in plain words. What it is, what you decide, how you're judged, how people get here and where they go next. Then the part no course gives you: twelve AI tutors who learn your work.

See how AI is changing this job, and get the full read by email.

As a Lead Cloud Database Administrator, a good place to start on Prompt Engineering & LLM Integration for Database Operations is Planning Automation Across a Department, a free Future Fluency module at Level 5. You'd practise working out what in your department's work could be automated, what should not be, and what to recommend.

Free to start, no card.

Keep this job description

Where should we send it?

One email: what AI is changing in this job, the new skills it asks for, where it leads, and where to start free. With a link back here. Nothing else follows unless you confirm your address.

Your employer, or 'self-employed'

Leading a team? Try this with up to five of them for 14 days, free.

  • Experience bandLead (8-12 years)
  • Direct reports3-5 reports
  • Reports toDatabase Engineering Manager
  • UK framework levelUsually a manager, or the deepest specialist in a team

Also advertised as Staff Cloud DBA · Principal Database Engineer (Cloud) · Cloud Data Architect

Built on 43,079 real UK job descriptions we analysed · grounded in what real qualifications cover

1From this job to a course

The qualifications matched to this job

Pearson BTEC Level 5 Higher National Diploma in Cloud Computing Pearson Education Ltd · Level 5 · covers 4 of 10 standards
NOCN Level 5 Diploma in Electronic and Communications Engineering NOCN · Level 5 · covers 4 of 10 standards
Pearson BTEC Level 5 Higher National Diploma in Computing for England Pearson Education Ltd · Level 5 · covers 2 of 10 standards
ATHE Level 5 Extended Diploma in Computing ATHE Ltd · Level 5 · covers 2 of 10 standards
Pearson BTEC Level 5 Higher National Diploma in Digital Technologies Pearson Education Ltd · Level 5 · covers 2 of 10 standards
Pearson BTEC Level 4 Higher National Certificate in Cloud Computing Pearson Education Ltd · Level 4 · covers 3 of 10 standards

Matched from the standards this job is measured against: a suggestion, not an official ruling.

The units you would start with

Database Design & Development in the Cloud Pearson BTEC Level 5 Higher National Diploma in Cloud Computing
Cloud Computing NOCN Level 5 Diploma in Electronic and Communications Engineering
Network and Cloud Design and Configuration ATHE Level 5 Extended Diploma in Computing
Cloud Fundamentals Pearson BTEC Level 5 Higher National Diploma in Digital Technologies

The future skills this job leans on

AI Fluency working with AI as a thinking partner
Data Fluency turning numbers into a decision
Automation Fluency building AI into how work runs
Systems Fluency seeing the whole picture
Your Plan Illustration

Built for Lead Cloud Database Administrator

4 units that map to this job, from the qualifications that cover it.

  1. Database Design & Development in the Cloud Pearson Education Ltd · covers 4 of 10 standards Level 5
  2. Cloud Computing NOCN · covers 4 of 10 standards Level 5
  3. Network and Cloud Design and Configuration ATHE Ltd · covers 2 of 10 standards Level 5
  4. Cloud Fundamentals Pearson Education Ltd · covers 2 of 10 standards Level 5
These are the real units behind this job, in the order they rank for it. Nothing here is marked done, because this plan has not been started by anyone yet. Yours would fill in as you go.

2AI and this work

Will AI change your work as a Lead Cloud Database Administrator?

Nobody can say exactly how. Here is what this job is being asked for next, and where to start.

The new skill this role is being asked for

  • Prompt Engineering & LLM Integration for Database Operations
Why each one is rising

The future skills this job leans on

We'll only ever tell you what we can actually back up. No hype, no scare tactics.

What happens when you start

Next, a free account. We build your Lead Cloud Database Administrator plan as you set up, starting with the free Automation Fluency module. No card.

Your first Future Fluency module is free. After that, your AI tutor is £70 a month.

Keep this read. One email with what AI is changing in this job, the new skills it asks for and where to start free. Nothing else follows unless you confirm your address.

3What this role really is

A Lead Cloud Database Administrator designs how cloud data platforms are built, scaled and secured. The role involves guiding a small team of DBAs and setting the architecture that data systems run on, so they hold up under demand and stay cost-effective.

4What you'd actually use

The tools this job runs on, and how well you'd need to know each one.

AWS RDS & Aurora / Azure SQL Database & Cosmos DB Expert

Architecting, deploying, managing, and optimising highly available and scalable database solutions across various cloud platforms. You'll be the expert on their nuances.

PostgreSQL, MySQL, Microsoft SQL Server Expert

Deep performance tuning, complex schema design, replication management, and troubleshooting for these core database engines. You'll know their internals.

Terraform / CloudFormation Expert

Writing, reviewing, and deploying complex, reusable IaC modules for all database infrastructure, ensuring consistency and automation.

Developing robust automation scripts for failover, scaling, compliance checks, and custom monitoring integrations. You'll automate the boring stuff.

Datadog / New Relic (Database Monitoring) Advanced

Building custom dashboards, configuring advanced alerting logic (e.g., anomaly detection), and using deep-dive tools like `pg_stat_statements` for proactive and reactive performance analysis.

HashiCorp Vault / AWS Secrets Manager Advanced

Designing and implementing secrets rotation policies, configuring database encryption (TDE, KMS), and ensuring fine-grained access control for all data stores.

Git / GitHub / GitLab CI Advanced

Managing branching strategies, reviewing and merging complex pull requests, and integrating database schema changes into CI/CD pipelines for automated deployments.

5What you get to decide, and how that grows

Power in a job isn't your title. It's what you're allowed to decide. Here's how it grows as you move up.

The choiceComing in Where you are nowThe step above
Database Architecture Design Executes designs provided by senior team members; no independent design authority. Proposes minor design improvements for existing systems; designs for non-critical new features with review. Designs and implements new database architectures for critical systems; consults on cross-functional data architecture; full authority for technical choices within project scope.
Cloud Resource Provisioning & Cost Requests resources following pre-defined templates; no budget authority. Independently provisions standard resources; proposes cost-saving measures with manager approval. Defines IaC standards and automation for resource provisioning; approves cloud spend up to £50K; accountable for cost optimisation initiatives within your domain.
Incident Response & Resolution Follows runbooks to resolve known issues; escalates anything outside documented procedures. Independently resolves most P2/P3 incidents; contributes to P1 incident response under senior guidance. Leads P1 incident response for database-related outages; defines incident playbooks and post-mortem actions; acts as primary escalation point for complex issues.
Team Mentorship & Technical Guidance Receives guidance and feedback from senior team members. Provides informal guidance to new joiners; participates in code reviews. Formally mentors 3-5 team members; sets technical standards and provides formal code reviews; leads technical training sessions and knowledge sharing.

6How you'll be judged

The scoreboard, and what is not on it. The hard targets, how often each is actually looked at, and the quiet signals that never reach a dashboard.

Database Availability (Uptime)
The percentage of time our critical production databases are fully operational and accessible.
Target · > 99.99% for critical systems

Achieving 99.995% uptime for our core customer database in Q3, meaning less than 2 minutes of unplanned downtime for the quarter.

Mean Time to Recovery (MTTR)
The average time it takes to restore service after a database incident or failure, especially for automated failovers.
Target · < 15 minutes for automated failover scenarios

Successfully failing over the primary database during a simulated outage in 12 minutes, including validation checks.

Query Performance Improvement
Reducing the latency of our most business-critical queries, often measured at the 95th or 99th percentile.
Target · Reduce P95 latency on key queries by 25% quarter-over-quarter

Identifying and optimising the top 5 slowest customer-facing queries, leading to a 30% reduction in their P95 response time.

Project Delivery Rate
The percentage of major database-related projects (e.g., migrations, new platform rollouts) that are completed on time and within budget.
Target · 90% of migration projects delivered on-time and on-budget

Leading the successful migration of our analytics database to a new cloud platform, completing it one week ahead of schedule and 5% under budget.

Cloud Data Cost Optimisation
Identifying and implementing strategies to reduce our overall cloud database spend without impacting performance or availability.
Target · Decrease cloud data spend by 10% YoY through optimisation efforts

Recommending and implementing a strategy for Reserved Instances and rightsizing, leading to a £50K annual saving on database costs.

Technical Leadership & Guidance
How effectively you set technical standards, provide architectural guidance, and mentor junior team members.
  • Your team actively seeks your technical advice
  • architectural designs are well-documented and followed
  • you lead technical discussions and present solutions to wider engineering teams
  • your direct reports show measurable skill improvement.
Automation & Efficiency Drive
Your proactive efforts in automating routine tasks and improving operational efficiency across the database landscape.
  • New automation scripts are regularly deployed
  • manual toil is visibly reduced
  • you champion a GitOps approach for database changes
  • you identify and eliminate recurring operational issues through tooling.
Architectural Design Quality
The robustness, scalability, and security of the database architectures you design or oversee.
  • Architectural diagrams are clear and comprehensive
  • designs are reviewed positively by senior engineers and security teams
  • new systems built to your designs meet performance and availability targets without major issues
  • you proactively address technical debt in designs.
Cross-functional Influence
Your ability to influence product and engineering teams to adopt database best practices and make data-driven architectural decisions.
  • You're regularly consulted by product and engineering on new features impacting data
  • your recommendations on schema design or query optimisation are adopted
  • you successfully advocate for database-centric initiatives (e.g., new monitoring tools).

7Would you like it

Both sides. What people enjoy, and what grinds them down.

What people enjoy
Solving Complex Technical Puzzles

You'll spend a good chunk of your week diagnosing elusive performance issues, designing resilient architectures, or figuring out how to migrate a tricky legacy database with zero downtime. It's about the thrill of cracking a tough technical nut.

Spending three days deep-diving into query plans and system logs to identify a subtle locking contention that was causing intermittent application timeouts, then implementing a fix that stabilises the system.

Building Robust, Scalable Systems

You get a real kick out of designing and implementing database solutions that can handle massive loads, fail gracefully, and scale effortlessly. You're building the foundations that the whole business relies on.

Architecting a multi-region, active-passive Aurora cluster with automated failover and read replicas, then seeing it perform flawlessly during a peak traffic event.

Mentoring and Technical Leadership

You enjoy guiding junior DBAs, helping them grow their skills, and setting the technical direction for the team. You're the person they come to when they're stuck or need advice on a complex problem.

Leading a weekly technical deep-dive session with your team, sharing knowledge on advanced PostgreSQL tuning, and helping a junior DBA debug their first complex performance issue.

What frustrates people
  • The 3 AM Page: Being woken up for a critical performance degradation caused by a new marketing campaign or data science query that no one bothered to mention was launching.
  • The 'Developer's Pet Query': Arguing with developers who are emotionally attached to a poorly written query and refuse to believe it's the source of the problem, insisting 'it works on my machine.'
  • The Zero-Downtime Mirage: The immense pressure to perform major version upgrades or schema migrations with 'zero downtime,' which in reality means a weekend of high-stress, white-knuckle monitoring.
  • Death by a Thousand Cuts: Spending 40% of your week on 'quick questions' from developers via Slack, completely derailing any planned project work on automation or performance improvements.
  • The Blame Game: The database is often the first thing to be blamed for any application slowness and the last thing to be proven innocent. You'll spend time proving it wasn't the database.
  • FinOps vs. Performance: Justifying the cost of a provisioned IOPS storage volume to a finance team that only sees the pound sign, not the catastrophic latency it prevents during peak traffic.
  • Schema-on-Read Purgatory: Cleaning up after applications that use the database as a schemaless JSON dump, forcing all the data integrity logic and performance pain onto the data platform.
What this role does not give you
  • A quiet, predictable 9-to-5 schedule without interruptions.
  • The luxury of working on only greenfield projects with unlimited budget.
  • Complete control over all architectural decisions without needing to compromise or influence.
  • A role where you only deal with code and never have to talk to people.

8Who you work with

This role directly shapes the resilience, scalability, and cost-efficiency of our core data infrastructure. Your decisions here affect application performance, data integrity, and our ability to meet regulatory obligations. Get it right, and the business can innovate faster; get it wrong, and we're looking at significant operational risk and financial penalties.

Inside the business
  • VP of Engineering
  • Product Leads
  • Security & Compliance Team
  • Other Lead Engineers (DevOps, Application)
  • Finance Team (for cloud spend discussions)
Outside the business
  • Cloud Platform Vendors (AWS, Azure)
  • Database Software Vendors (e.g., PostgreSQL support)
  • External Auditors (for compliance reviews)

9What you need before you start

Not a wish list. The things you would be expected to already have.

  • Proven track record of designing and implementing highly available and resilient database solutions in a major cloud provider (AWS or Azure).
  • Extensive experience with Infrastructure as Code (Terraform or CloudFormation) for managing database infrastructure.
  • Demonstrable experience leading complex database migration projects from start to finish.
  • Strong background in deep-dive performance tuning and optimisation for relational databases (PostgreSQL, SQL Server, MySQL).
  • Experience mentoring junior team members and providing technical leadership.
  • A solid understanding of networking, security, and operating system fundamentals as they relate to database systems.

10What to practise next

Where the job is going, and what to do about it starting this week.

Data Mesh & Distributed Data Architectures

As organisations grow, centralised data platforms become bottlenecks. Understanding data mesh principles – data as a product, domain ownership, self-serve data infrastructure – will be crucial for designing scalable data ecosystems.

Data Domain Ownership · Data Product Thinking · Self-Serve Data Infrastructure · Federated Computational Governance

  • This quarter: Read Zhamak Dehghani's 'Data Mesh' book and discuss its implications with your manager.
  • Next quarter: Identify one internal data domain that could benefit from a data product approach and prototype a solution.
  • Month 6: Present a proposal for how data mesh principles could be applied to a specific challenge within our organisation.
  • Ongoing: Engage with data engineers and analytics teams to understand their pain points with current data access patterns.

Quick win: Start thinking about our existing datasets as 'products'. What's their API? Who owns them? How discoverable are they?

Serverless & Event-Driven Data Architectures

The move to serverless compute and event-driven microservices means database interactions are changing. You'll need to design data patterns that fit this paradigm, optimising for cost, scalability, and resilience without traditional servers.

Database-as-a-Service (DBaaS) Deep Dive · Event Sourcing & CQRS · Stream Processing for Data Replication · Cost Optimisation in Serverless

  • This quarter: Take an online course on serverless architectures and event-driven design patterns.
  • Next quarter: Prototype a small application using AWS Lambda/Azure Functions and a serverless database.
  • Month 6: Evaluate the suitability of event sourcing for a new microservice or feature within our existing architecture.
  • Ongoing: Stay updated on new serverless database offerings and features from cloud providers.

Quick win: Identify one small, non-critical service that could be migrated to a serverless database to gain hands-on experience.

11Staying current once you are in

What people here do to keep up
  • Regularly contributing to or leading internal knowledge-sharing sessions and workshops on advanced database topics.
  • Attending industry conferences (e.g., AWS re:Invent, Azure Summit, KubeCon) to stay abreast of the latest cloud and data trends.
  • Participating in open-source database projects or contributing to relevant technical communities.
  • Pursuing advanced cloud certifications or specialist database vendor certifications.
  • Taking online courses or masterclasses on emerging data technologies like vector databases or data mesh architectures.

12The rising capability

The rising capability

Zavmo analysis

What's rising in its place

This is where the work is heading, and the higher pay with it. Get fluent here and the shift stops being a threat and starts being your edge.

Prompt Engineering & LLM Integration for Database Operations

Competitors are already using Large Language Models (LLMs) to draft complex SQL queries, analyse performance logs, and generate runbooks in minutes. DBAs who figure this out will outproduce peers significantly. This isn't future-gazing; it's already here.

  • Context Windows & Token Limits
  • Temperature Settings for Different Tasks
  • RAG (Retrieval Augmented Generation) Architectures
  • Output Validation & Hallucination Detection
  • Prompt Chaining & Agentic Workflows

13What you’ll use

What you’ll use

Skills this role draws on

Technical

  • Database Performance Tuning (Advanced)
  • High Availability (HA) & Disaster Recovery (DR) Planning (Expert)
  • Database Security & Compliance (Advanced)
  • Data Migration & Modernisation (Advanced)
  • Infrastructure as Code (IaC) for Data (Expert)
  • Cloud FinOps for Databases (Advanced)

14The pathway

The pathway

How you actually get there, here

How you become one varies far more by country than what one does. This is the UK route. Most people take one of these ways in; the right one depends on where you're starting from.

  1. 1

    Senior Cloud Database Administrator (L3)

    3-5 years

    Skills to master

    • Mastering complex migration projects, leading major incident responses, deep performance tuning, and starting to mentor junior team members. You'll need to show you can own entire workstreams without constant supervision.

    You're ready to move on when

    • Consistently delivering complex database projects on time and to a high standard.
    • Being the go-to person for challenging technical problems within your team.
    • Proactively identifying and implementing improvements to database operations.
    • Demonstrating strong communication skills with both technical and non-technical audiences.
    • Taking initiative to mentor and guide less experienced colleagues.
  2. 2

    Senior Site Reliability Engineer (SRE) with Database Specialisation

    4-6 years

    Skills to master

    • Deepening your database expertise beyond just operational aspects, focusing on architectural design, performance tuning, and data security. You'll need to show you can lead database-specific initiatives and not just general infrastructure.

    You're ready to move on when

    • Successfully leading projects that significantly improve database reliability and performance.
    • Developing and deploying advanced automation for database operations.
    • Demonstrating a strong understanding of database internals and optimisation techniques.
    • Proactively contributing to database architectural discussions and decisions.
    • Showing a passion for data integrity and availability beyond general system uptime.
  3. 3

    Database Architect / Data Platform Engineer

    2-4 years

    Skills to master

    • Gaining hands-on experience with cloud database operations and management. While you might have designed systems, this path requires you to understand the day-to-day realities of running them at scale, including incident response and performance tuning.

    You're ready to move on when

    • Designing and implementing database solutions that are both architecturally sound and operationally viable.
    • Demonstrating strong practical experience with cloud database technologies.
    • Successfully translating high-level architectural concepts into concrete, deployable database designs.
    • Showing a willingness to get hands-on with operational tasks and troubleshooting.
    • Understanding the trade-offs between different database technologies and their real-world implications.

15Where this role leads

The long view: This role can lead into broader data platform leadership, such as Director of Data Platforms, or into deep technical specialism as a Distinguished Engineer.

The ten Future Fluencies

Zavmo analysis

The credential is what you can do today. These are what keep you valuable.

A qualification proves you can do the job as it's defined today. These ten are what decide whether you're still the obvious person for it in five years. They're the capabilities employers are now writing into senior roles faster than people are learning them. Zavmo weaves them through whatever you study, so you come out with both: the credential and the fluency.

The highlighted ones are the Fluencies your role leans on hardest, from how Lead Cloud Database Administrator is actually changing.

How you would learn this

One to one, on the work you already do

A tutor sets the task against your own job and marks the reasoning, at your pace. There is no cohort to fall behind.

A lesson from Database Design & Development in the Cloud, worked against Lead Cloud Database Administrator.

Database Design & Development in the Cloud Level 5

Applied to your work in Lead Cloud Database Administrator

The objective of this unit is to equip learners with the skills to design, develop, and test a fully functional relational database system hosted in the cloud, based on provided requirements. Learners will utilise appropriate design tools and methods, implement data population and manipulation scripts, and produce comprehensive documentation to support the system and its cloud hosting.

How the thinking builds
  1. 1 Remember
  2. 2 Understand
  3. 3 Apply
  4. 4 Analyse
  5. 5 Evaluate
  6. 6 Create
An illustration of a Zavmo lesson, built from this role’s own route. The unit, its objective and every criterion above are the awarding body’s own words, not an example.

It is £70 a month, billed monthly. Your free first module is Future Fluency, and you can cancel any time.

See Your Progress Grow Illustration
Lead Cloud Database Administrator
  • Database Performance Tuning (Advanced)
  • High Availability (HA) & Disaster Recovery (DR) Planning (Expert)
  • Database Security & Compliance (Advanced)
  • Data Migration & Modernisation (Advanced)
  • Infrastructure as Code (IaC) for Data (Expert)
  • Cloud FinOps for Databases (Advanced)
This is your Mind Palace on learn.zavmo.ai. Every skill above comes from this role's own record, not an example borrowed from another job. A node lights up when you evidence it, and what you build stays yours between jobs. That is the part a course cannot do.

16The detail, folded away

Everything else the record holds

The career branches in full, how AI is already showing up in the day-to-day, and the questions people ask about this job. Here when you want them, out of the way while you decide.

Where it leads next, rung by rung

Where it leads

The career path, and where it branches

Lead Cloud Database Administrator is a start, not a ceiling. Each step below asks for new skills and hands back more autonomy.

  1. Principal Cloud Database Administrator (L5)

    3-5 years

    From Lead (L4) to Principal (L5)

    • Defining the multi-year database technology roadmap for the entire organisation.
    • Evaluating and selecting new database technologies at an enterprise scale (e.g., new NoSQL platforms, vector databases).
    • Owning the cloud data budget (P&L up to £2M) and driving strategic cost optimisation.
    • Representing the organisation externally at conferences or industry working groups.
  2. Database Engineering Manager (L5)

    2-4 years

    From Lead (L4) to Manager (L5)

    • Defining team processes and operational excellence frameworks.
    • Managing vendor relationships and contract negotiations for database tools and services.
    • Overseeing multiple concurrent database projects and ensuring alignment with company goals.
    • Developing and implementing a comprehensive training and development programme for the DBA team.
Working with AI on the job

Working with AI

Where AI is starting to help

Let's be real, a Lead Cloud DBA's job is packed. You're designing, optimising, mentoring, and firefighting. What if you could offload some of the tedious, time-consuming parts of your day? That's where AI comes in. We're not talking about replacing you; we're talking about giving you a serious superpower.

Our AI Productivity Hub isn't just a buzzword; it's a collection of tools and best practices specifically tailored for technical roles like yours. Imagine an intelligent assistant that helps you diagnose problems faster, write better code, and automate documentation. This isn't future-gazing; it's happening now, and we'll help you get there.

Proactive Performance Tuning

Use AI-powered observability tools, like Datadog Database Monitoring, to analyse historical performance data. It'll automatically spot anomalous query patterns and recommend specific indexing or configuration changes before they cause an outage. No more endless log diving; just actionable insights.

Intelligent Query Optimisation

Got a poorly performing query and a complex table schema? Feed it into an LLM (like GPT-4 or Claude) and ask it to rewrite the query for optimal performance. It can suggest better join strategies, use of Common Table Expressions (CTEs), or window functions that even a seasoned DBA might overlook. It's like having another expert pair of eyes, instantly.

Automated Runbook & Documentation Generation

Spend less time on tedious documentation. Use AI assistants to generate boilerplate documentation for new database schemas or to create step-by-step operational runbooks. For example, 'Create a runbook for failing over the primary PostgreSQL RDS instance in the eu-west-1 region.' You'll refine it, of course, but the heavy lifting is done.

Incident Post-Mortem (RCA) Drafting

After an incident, you're usually exhausted. Give an LLM the timeline of events, alerts, and resolution steps. Ask it to draft a comprehensive Root Cause Analysis (RCA) document, including summary, impact analysis, and recommended preventative actions. You'll then refine and validate it, saving hours on the initial write-up.

Common questions

Common questions

How do you become a Lead Cloud Database Administrator?

Common routes in include Senior Cloud Database Administrator (3-5 years), Senior Site Reliability Engineer (SRE) with Database Specialisation (4-6 years) and Database Architect / Data Platform Engineer (2-4 years). Times vary with prior experience.

Where can a Lead Cloud Database Administrator progress to?

This role can lead on to Principal Cloud Database Administrator (3-5 years) and Database Engineering Manager (2-4 years), depending on the skills you build.

What new skills matter most for a Lead Cloud Database Administrator?

Increasingly, Prompt Engineering & LLM Integration for Database Operations. These are the skills our record of this role lists as growing.

Free tools

Want a read on where you stand?

Three free tools, no account needed. Each one ends with a role, a level and a way in.

17Where to go from here

Other roles at Level 5

Same depth of qualification, different job. Useful if the work appeals but this particular role does not.

More jobs in technology and data

Stay in the field you know and move sideways rather than up.

If you leave this industry

The skills built as a Lead Cloud Database Administrator carry into cloud architecture, data engineering, and product management for database tools. Demand for cloud data expertise spans most industries.

This role profile is © 2026 Growth Engineering Technologies Ltd. Built from UK occupational standards and regulated qualification data, and written for Zavmo.

You're not behind. You're right on time. The shift is only just beginning. Your role won't look the same in two years. Be the one who leads the change, not the one it happens to. Start my free Automation Fluency module What happens next: a free account, then we build your plan as you set up. No card. Build your plan, see your roadmap and meet the twelve tutors matched to you. All free. When you're ready to start learning, it's £70 a month, billed monthly. Cancel any time and billing stops.