Staff Database Engineer

As a key member of the Data Operations team, you ll be tasked with designing, building, and supporting large-scale, distributed data systems that drive our organization s data infrastructure forward, and power our products and services. Your responsibilities will include managing RDS databases, developing data pipelines, optimizing data storage and retrieval processes, and ensuring the reliability and scalability of our data architecture. You ll collaborate closely with cross-functional teams to understand data requirements, implement solutions, and troubleshoot issues as they arise. You ll also play a pivotal role in advocating for and implementing software engineering best practices to ensure the efficiency, maintainability, and robustness of our data systems. This role offers an exciting opportunity to work on cutting-edge technology and contribute to shaping the future of data-driven decision making within our organization.

What You ll Do

Identify, analyze, and resolve complex SQL performance and scalability issues

Deeply analyze execution plans, indexing strategies, concurrency, locking, and resource utilization

Design and implement durable performance improvements across queries, schemas, and workloads

Build automation and tooling to detect, diagnose, and remediate database performance issues

Partner with application and platform teams to improve database access patterns and system design

Establish, document, and enforce database performance best practices

Clearly explain complex technical concepts and trade-offs to both technical and non-technical audiences

Required Expertise

Candidates must demonstrate expert-level ( can teach a class ) knowledge in all the following:

SQL performance tuning and optimization

SQL Server, Postgres, Aurora RDS

Query optimizers, execution plans, indexing, statistics, and transaction isolation

Designing and supporting database-backed APIs

Building automation and tooling to support database performance and reliability

Infrastructure as Code using Terraform

Leveraging AI to automatically identify bottlenecks

Cloud platforms: AWS, including managed database services

Performance monitoring, troubleshooting, and tuning in distributed systems

CI/CD pipelines and deployment automation

Capacity planning, workload modeling, and cost optimization

What We re Looking For

A proven track record of improving database performance at scale

A keen eye to spot when something isn t right and the diligence to not stop until its resolved

Strong written and verbal communication skills

Ability to mentor engineers and influence architecture and design decisions

Comfortable operating as a technical authority across teams

Responsibilities

Lead the design and implementation of data storage and streaming solutions, data architecture, analytics frameworks, governance protocols, and data quality standards.

Serve as subject matter expert in database performance, CDC, ETL, scalability, and security

Develop and enforce enterprise standards, policies, and procedures

Partner with senior leadership to align data architecture with business strategy

Lead major modernization, migration, or transformation projects

Mentor other technical staff and lead knowledge-sharing efforts

Evaluate technology trends and make strategic recommendations

Expertise & Knowledge:

Typically requires a Bachelor s degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, or a related field and a minimum of 14 years of related experience; or an advanced degree with 8+ years of experience; or equivalent related work experience

Recognized expert in database design, architecture, and optimization

Demonstrated leadership in enterprise database strategy and execution

Experience with cloud-native and distributed database solutions

Strong cross-functional collaboration and communication skills