Senior Engineer, Database Reliability

This is a fully remote position, open to applicants in United States, +3 more countries.

📋 Description

• Take ownership of the reliability concerning the Redis Enterprise and AWS ElastiCache caching layer, including aspects like capacity planning, failover behavior, upgrade strategies, and healthy usage patterns.

• Participate in the on-call rotation and escalate data-layer issues during incidents in production.

• Assist internal customers with troubleshooting slow queries and providing storage usage recommendations.

• Transform recurring support inquiries into comprehensive documentation and useful tooling.

• Oversee database and caching infrastructure as code utilizing Terraform modules and provisioning workflows.

• Develop database and cache templates along with standards within the internal platform’s golden path.

• Construct and maintain data-layer dashboards, alerts, and service level objectives (SLOs).

• Enhance performance and resilience across MySQL, PostgreSQL, and Redis fleets.

• Provide guidance to development teams on architecture, database engine selection, and caching strategies.

• Consult product teams regarding schema design, query patterns, and capacity planning.

• Lead design reviews for the data layer and mentor engineers.

• Create documentation, patterns, and runbooks for database and cache operations.

• Set the strategic direction for Zapier’s data infrastructure and advance the Database Reliability Engineering (DBRE) practice.

⛳️ Requirements

• A minimum of 7 years in systems administration, systems engineering, or software development.

• At least 4 years of experience managing production relational databases.

• Profound expertise in MySQL or PostgreSQL, along with a working knowledge of the other.

• Familiarity with extensions and tools in the database-engine ecosystem.

• Experience in designing and operating caching solutions at scale, including Redis.

• Proven track record in creating and maintaining highly available, cloud-based database systems within AWS or other cloud platforms.

• Experience managing infrastructure using Terraform or similar Infrastructure as Code (IaC) tools.

• Comfortable operating stateful services alongside Kubernetes or other distributed systems.

• Experience in implementing metrics, logging, and alerting using tools such as Datadog, Prometheus, or CloudWatch.

• Knowledge of query performance data, replication lag, and cache hit rates.

• Experience in participating in an on-call rotation for production data systems.

• Experience in reviewing designs, mentoring engineers, documenting best practices, and building automation or tools.

• Ability to responsibly utilize AI tools for automating code, query plans, logs, runbooks, and incident investigations.

• Education is not a requirement.

• Must possess authorization to work from the selected home location; Zapier does not provide visa or transfer sponsorship.

🏝️ Benefits

• Equity.

• Bonus.

• Remote work opportunities.

• An equal opportunity and inclusive workplace.

• Reasonable accommodations for applicants with disabilities.

• No more than seven days without updates on application status during the process.