Staff Database Engineer

About Our Client

The organization operates one of the world's most heavily trafficked live streaming platforms, supporting a global network of independent content creators and millions of real-time viewers. It delivers interactive video at scale through complex broadcasting and low-latency streaming infrastructure, providing highly engaging user experiences around the clock.

About the Opportunity

The Staff Database Engineer will serve as the primary owner of the reliability, availability, and recoverability of a large-scale PostgreSQL environment. This role is responsible for maintaining mission-critical databases that power core user experiences and revenue-generating features. By optimizing performance, scalability, and disaster recovery capabilities, the position plays a vital role in ensuring the platform's operational stability and continued growth.

Responsibilities

• Manage the day-to-day health, reliability, and performance of the PostgreSQL database environment
• Identify and mitigate risks related to database reliability, scalability, and performance
• Improve high availability, replication, backup, restore, and disaster recovery processes
• Lead database incident response efforts and implement long-term preventative improvements
• Plan and execute database upgrades, migrations, and maintenance with minimal service disruption
• Monitor and optimize database performance for high-volume, low-latency workloads
• Develop observability, alerting, automation, and operational documentation in partnership with Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) teams
• Prepare database infrastructure for continued growth in data volume and platform scale
• Review database architecture for new products and engineering initiatives
• Establish operational standards, best practices, and automation for PostgreSQL administration
• Document systems and share PostgreSQL expertise across the engineering organization
• Participate in an on-call rotation for critical database incidents
• Analyze and optimize query execution plans, indexing strategies, autovacuum configuration, checkpoint tuning, and storage efficiency

Requirements

• 10+ years of experience managing large-scale, production PostgreSQL environments
• Deep expertise in PostgreSQL reliability, including replication, failover, backup, and disaster recovery
• Proven ability to diagnose and resolve complex database incidents
• Experience planning and executing database upgrades, migrations, and maintenance activities
• Strong understanding of PostgreSQL internals and advanced performance tuning
• Experience supporting high-volume or rapidly growing database environments
• Strong Linux administration skills and understanding of infrastructure impacts on database performance
• Proficiency in scripting and automation for operational tasks
• Experience developing monitoring, alerting, runbooks, and incident response processes
• Excellent communication and cross-functional collaboration skills

Pay

$195,000–$227,500 USD annual base salary

Benefits & Perks

• Medical, dental, vision, and life insurance with employer-paid coverage for employees and eligible dependents
• Short-term and long-term disability insurance
• Unlimited Paid Time Off (PTO)
• Annual company-wide year-end closure
• Optional 401(k) plan with 5% employer match
• Twelve paid company holidays
• Complimentary in-office lunches or a $125/week meal stipend for remote employees
• Employee assistance and recognition programs