Sr. PostgreSQL Specialist Solutions Architect, Amazon Aurora

Are you a builder that lives and breathes PostgreSQL? Have you spent years tuning vacuum behavior, diagnosing lock contention under heavy OLTP workloads, reasoning about query planner decisions, managing replication topologies, and guiding large-scale migrations from commercial engines like Oracle and SQL Server? Are you the person your organization turns to when a Postgres system is misbehaving at 3 AM and when leadership needs a whiteboard session on where the data platform is headed next?

About the role

As a Specialist Solutions Architect for Aurora PostgreSQL, you will be the technical authority that AWS's largest and most complex customers rely on to architect, migrate, and operate PostgreSQL workloads on Amazon Aurora and Amazon RDS. This is not a generalist database role. You will focus on Aurora PostgreSQL, going deep where others go broad. You will partner directly with customer engineers and CTOs to design well-architected production architectures that hold up under real-world pressure and the operational patterns that distinguish battle-tested Postgres practitioners from those with only surface-level familiarity.

Responsibilities

• Serve as the technical advisor for AWS's key customers running or migrating to Aurora PostgreSQL and RDS for PostgreSQL, providing hands-on architectural guidance from design through production operation.
• Guide customers on Aurora PostgreSQL operational best practices including performance & scaling, high availability & durability, monitoring & observability, maintenance & patching, backup & recovery, security and operational hygiene.
• Design and validate Aurora PostgreSQL architectures that leverage Aurora-specific capabilities including storage auto-scaling, read replica scaling, Global Database, HA/DR, Serverless, ensuring customers realize the full value of the platform.
• Partner with the Aurora service team as the voice of the customer, surfacing recurring pain points, advocating for feature enhancements, and participating in roadmap reviews.
• Engage with customer engineers in whiteboard sessions, architecture reviews, and technical deep dives, providing candid guidance and pushing back diplomatically when a proposed design will not hold up at scale.
• Develop and publish technical thought leadership content including blogs, reference architectures, white papers, and re-usable artifacts, that elevate the broader PostgreSQL community on AWS.
• Advise customers on complex database migrations (Oracle, SQL Server, and other engines to Aurora PostgreSQL).
• Present at key industry events including AWS re:Invent, AWS Summits, PostgreSQL community conferences (PGConf, PGDay), and customer-facing workshops.
• Stay current with PostgreSQL community developments (new major versions, extensions ecosystem, community tooling) and translate those advancements into actionable guidance for AWS customers.

Requirements

• 8+ years of specific technology domain areas (e.g. software development, cloud computing, systems engineering, infrastructure, security, networking, data & analytics) experience.
• 3+ years of design, implementation, or consulting in applications and infrastructures experience.
• 10+ years of IT development or implementation/consulting in the software or Internet industries experience.
• Hands-on experience with Aurora PostgreSQL, RDS for PostgreSQL, or significant hands-on time with AWS database and migration services (DMS, SCT).
• Led migrations to Aurora as the technical owner.
• Experience with Aurora-specific features: storage architecture, fast cloning, Global Database, Performance/Database Insights, and Blue/Green Deployments.
• Experience architecting or operating PostgreSQL solutions at scale (multi-TB databases, tens of thousands of connections, cross-region replication).
• Software development experience (Python, Java, etc.), and fluency with AI tooling (Kiro, Claude Code, Codex, etc.).

Preferred Qualifications

• 7+ years of infrastructure architecture, database architecture and networking experience.
• 5+ years of hands-on experience designing, operating, or engineering PostgreSQL-based systems in production environments at scale.
• Expertise in PostgreSQL internals and operational practices: MVCC and vacuum behavior, query planner and optimizer internals, pgvector, indexing strategies (B-tree, GIN, GiST, BRIN), replication (streaming, logical), extension ecosystem/architecture, and connection management.
• Demonstrated experience with database migrations, including schema conversion, data migration tooling, and performance validation.

About the team

AWS values diverse experiences. Even if you do not meet all of the preferred qualifications and skills listed in the job description, we encourage candidates to apply. If your career is just starting, hasn’t followed a traditional path, or includes alternative experiences, don’t let it stop you from applying.

Benefits

• Comprehensive health insurance (medical, dental, vision, prescription, Basic Life & AD&D insurance and option for Supplemental life plans).
• Employee Assistance Program (EAP), Mental Health Support, Medical Advice Line.
• Flexible Spending Accounts.
• Adoption and Surrogacy Reimbursement coverage.
• 401(k) matching.
• Paid time off and parental leave.
• Sign-on payments and restricted stock units (RSUs).

Pay

• USA, CA, San Francisco: $176,600.00 - $239,000.00 USD annually
• USA, NJ, Jersey City: $169,000.00 - $228,600.00 USD annually
• USA, NY, New York: $169,000.00 - $228,600.00 USD annually
• USA, TX, Dallas: $153,600.00 - $207,800.00 USD annually
• USA, VA, Arlington: $153,600.00 - $207,800.00 USD annually
• USA, VA, Herndon: $153,600.00 - $207,800.00 USD annually
• USA, WA, Seattle: $153,600.00 - $207,800.00 USD annually