Key management seems to be as important as backups but I understand that something so small (an encryption key) could seem unimportant because database backups are so big lol but they really do share important attributes (do not lose your keys, do not lose your data, do not expose your keys, do not expose your data, etc etc)

The key will never be rotated. (There's no reason to.)

We're not worried about key compromises.

If the key is lost, we have much bigger problems.