Senior Database Engineer

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

📋 Description

• Enhance the performance and reliability of the existing distributed database environment.

• Identify performance bottlenecks and reliability risks through instrumentation, code analysis, and staging tests.

• Optimize slow-running queries, indexing, and database configurations.

• Troubleshoot distributed-database problems, including transaction contention, retries, hot ranges, and inefficient access patterns.

• Set performance baselines.

• Provide guidance to engineering teams on schema migrations, access patterns, and configuration adjustments.

• Engage in design reviews focusing on schema design, primary keys, indexing, and transaction boundaries.

• Contribute database expertise during incident responses and root-cause analyses.

• Develop safer migration practices, documentation, and guidance materials.

• Take ownership of version upgrades, backup and recovery validation, cluster configurations, and capacity planning.

• Enhance database observability related to latency, retries, contention, range health, and capacity.

• Collaborate with Cockroach Labs on the managed database environment.

• Work together with infrastructure, platform, and application engineers.

• Mentor engineers in database troubleshooting, performance optimization, and distributed-database concepts.

• Act as the primary database expert on the Reliability team as a senior individual contributor without direct reports.

⛳️ Requirements

• Over 5 years of experience in a role focused on operating and optimizing production databases.

• Extensive, hands-on experience in managing distributed databases, particularly in terms of performance and high availability.

• Practical experience managing relational databases vital for business-critical production systems.

• Proven ability to diagnose database inefficiencies and achieve measurable improvements in queries, indexing, schema, or configurations.

• Strong SQL proficiency and familiarity with execution plans, transaction management, and distributed SQL trade-offs.

• Capability to evaluate database-change risks and articulate technical trade-offs effectively.

• Independent approach to exploring unfamiliar systems, setting priorities, and executing improvements.

• Collaborative and considerate work style.

• Production-level experience administering CockroachDB at significant transaction volumes.

• Familiarity with PostgreSQL administration.

• Experience with managed database services and collaboration with vendor support and engineering teams.

• Involvement in zero- or minimal-downtime schema migrations on large, high-traffic tables.

• Background in supporting payments, financial technology, or platforms with similar availability sensitivities.

• Experience in database capacity planning and cluster sizing, including multi-region setups.

• Proficiency in building operational tools or checks using Python, Go, or similar programming languages.

• Knowledge of ORMs like Rails ActiveRecord.

• Cloud experience with AWS or Azure.

• Database-focused cloud certifications are advantageous.

• CockroachDB or PostgreSQL experience is not mandatory if equivalent expertise in distributed database management is demonstrated.

• Must currently have legal authorization to work in the job location country and not require future sponsorship.

• Successful background and reference checks are required.

• Applicants must not be residents of New York.

🏝️ Benefits

• Competitive salary plus equity.

• Excellent medical and dental coverage, including a fully employer-paid option.

• Company-sponsored life and disability insurance.

• Optional vision and supplemental insurance options, along with various Flexible Spending Accounts (FSA).

• Open Paid Time Off policy and 12 weeks of paid leave for new parents.

• Matching 401(k) plan (5% up to $5,000 annually).

• $1,000 annual professional development stipend.

• Monthly stipend for home working/digital lifestyle, a new MacBook, and one-time accessory reimbursement.

• Access to company-sponsored professional coaching services.

• Opportunities for visits to HQ in Durham, North Carolina for remote employees.