Data Administrator, DBA

This is a fully remote position, open to applicants in India.

📋 Description

• Take ownership of the design, implementation, performance, availability, security, and reliability of our database ecosystem, including PostgreSQL, AWS RDS, Aurora, MongoDB, and MariaDB.

• Collaborate closely with engineering, data, and DevOps teams to ensure our databases are optimized for performance, scalability, and resilience to manage business-critical workloads.

• Oversee, monitor, and maintain production database environments across PostgreSQL, AWS RDS, Aurora, MongoDB, and MariaDB.

• Design, provision, and manage highly available and fault-tolerant database architectures on AWS (including RDS, Aurora clusters, Multi-AZ deployment, and read replicas).

• Carry out installation, configuration, upgrades, patching, and version migrations of database engines.

• Plan and execute database migrations (from on-premises to cloud, cross-engine, and version upgrades) with minimal downtime.

• Implement and manage backup, restore, point-in-time recovery (PITR), and disaster recovery (DR) strategies; regularly validate recovery drills.

• Optimize database performance through query optimization, indexing strategies, execution plan analysis, vacuum/auto-vacuum tuning, and connection pooling.

• Conduct capacity planning, sizing, and cost optimization for AWS RDS/Aurora workloads.

• Establish replication (logical/physical, streaming, MongoDB replica sets, MariaDB Galera/primary-replica) and manage failover processes.

• Define and uphold database security best practices — managing user access, IAM authentication, encryption both at rest and in transit, KMS, secrets management, and audit logging.

• Develop robust monitoring, alerting, and observability for databases using tools like CloudWatch, Performance Insights, Prometheus/Grafana, or similar technologies.

• Diagnose production incidents — such as slow queries, locks, replication lag, and storage saturation — and drive root cause analysis (RCA) and permanent solutions.

• Automate routine DBA tasks using scripts (Bash, Python) and Infrastructure as Code (Terraform/CloudFormation).

• Collaborate with developers on schema design, data modeling, query evaluations, and database best practices.

• Maintain documentation, runbooks, and standard operating procedures for the database platform.

• Ensure compliance with standards (SOC 2, ISO 27001, GDPR) for database systems.

⛳️ Requirements

• A minimum of 5 years of hands-on experience as a Database Administrator in production environments.

• Strong knowledge of database internals — including storage engines, transactions, isolation levels, locking, MVCC, and query planners.

• Proven experience supporting mission-critical OLTP workloads with strict high availability requirements.

• Solid scripting capabilities in Bash and/or Python for automation tasks.

• Extensive hands-on expertise in PostgreSQL administration — including installation, configuration, tuning, and upgrades.

• Experience with streaming replication, logical replication, pgBouncer, and partitioning techniques.

• Strong skills in query tuning — utilizing EXPLAIN/ANALYZE, managing indexes (B-tree, GIN, BRIN), and vacuum/bloat management.

• Practical experience with Aurora PostgreSQL clusters, reader/writer endpoints, and global databases.

• Significant hands-on experience managing production workloads on AWS RDS and Aurora (MySQL/PostgreSQL).

• Proficiency with parameter groups, option groups, snapshots, automated backups, and PITR.

• Experience configuring Multi-AZ setups, read replicas, cross-region replication, and disaster recovery configurations.

• Familiarity with AWS services related to databases — including IAM, KMS, Secrets Manager, VPC, Security Groups, CloudWatch, and Performance Insights.

• Hands-on experience administering MongoDB (both self-managed and/or Atlas).

• Knowledge of replica set configuration, sharding, indexing strategies, and tuning aggregation pipelines.

• Experience with backup, restore, and disaster recovery processes using mongodump/mongorestore or Ops Manager.

• Hands-on experience with MariaDB and/or MySQL administration in production environments.

• Familiarity with replication topologies (primary-replica, Galera cluster), InnoDB tuning, and binary log management.

• Knowledge of tools such as mysqldump, Percona Toolkit, and ProxySQL.

• Strong experience with backup/restore strategies and validated disaster recovery procedures.

• Expertise in database security — including role-based access control, encryption at rest/in transit, audit logging, and secrets rotation.

• Proficiency in setting up monitoring, alerting, and dashboards for database health and performance.

• Experience leading incident response and root cause analysis for database-related outages.

• Infrastructure as Code experience with Terraform and/or CloudFormation is a desirable addition.

• Familiarity with CI/CD processes for database changes (using Liquibase, Flyway, or schema migration tools) is a plus.

• Exposure to NoSQL/data stores beyond MongoDB (such as Redis, DynamoDB, Elasticsearch) is a bonus.

• Experience with database proxy tools (like RDS Proxy, ProxySQL, pgBouncer) is advantageous.

• Familiarity with containerized workloads (Docker, Kubernetes/EKS) and operating databases in conjunction with them is beneficial.

• Experience supporting SOC 2 / ISO 27001 / GDPR audits from a database perspective is a nice addition.

• Working knowledge of data engineering or analytics workloads (like read replicas feeding warehouses, CDC via Debezium / DMS) is a plus.

• AWS certifications (Solutions Architect, Database Specialty) are an advantage.

🏝️ Benefits

• Humility and kindness are core attributes we prioritize in our hiring process, fostering a culture of lightheartedness and laughter, alongside a commitment to kindness and creating a diverse and inclusive environment.

• Flexibility in your work schedule, allowing you to work from home. If you need to adjust your hours to accommodate personal needs, we support that as long as work responsibilities are met and communication is proactive. Additionally, you can work fully remotely from anywhere in the world for one month each year.

• Competitive market salaries, generous paid time off, and holiday schedules. You will also have access to our flexi benefits scheme for home office equipment or health and fitness expenses. Certain team members may be eligible for our employee share ownership plan, allowing them to share in our growth as we aim for a notable stock exchange listing in the Asia Pacific region.

• Opportunities for personal growth with substantial responsibility and autonomy at Sleek. We operate at a fast pace, enabling you to make decisions, learn from mistakes, and engage in a variety of internal and external training programs. We are also leading the way in utilizing AI in our field and are establishing a regional center of AI excellence. Our goal is for you to leave Sleek as a more well-rounded individual and professional.

• Sleek is proudly certified as a B Corp. Since our inception in 2017, we have been dedicated to building Sleek as a positive force for good, joining a community of industry leaders like Patagonia, Ben & Jerry's, and P&G in promoting an inclusive, equitable, and regenerative economy.