About the role
As a Database Engineer, you will own the physical health and reliability of our transactional database, with a focus on PostgreSQL design, performance, migrations, and recovery. You will design tables, keys, constraints, indexes, and partitions; write and test versioned schema migrations; and optimise complex SQL, stored procedures, functions, and views. You will analyse execution plans, diagnose slow queries, manage lock contention and bloat, and validate the impact of database changes on read and write paths. You will also run bulk and incremental data migrations, including cutovers and validation, and own backup and recovery practices such as retention, point-in-time recovery, and restore rehearsals. Success means reliable data, efficient access patterns, well-rehearsed operational processes, and carefully managed database changes.
Requirements:
- 5-9 years of hands-on PostgreSQL experience in a production or production-adjacent context.
- Strong SQL skills, including joins, aggregation, common table expressions, window functions, upserts, and DDL.
- Ability to read execution plans and use a systematic approach to diagnose and rewrite slow SQL statements.
- Practical understanding of transactions, isolation levels, locking, and MVCC.
- Experience with physical database design, including tables, keys, constraints, indexes, and partitioning.
- Practical experience with data migrations, including bulk or incremental loads, cutovers, and validation.
- Practical backup and restore experience, including retention, point-in-time recovery, or restore testing.
- Ability to write reliable operational scripts and idempotent reconciliation or backfill processes.
- Basic Python experience for data loading and operational scripting.
Nice to have:
- Experience with a schema migration tool such as Alembic, Flyway, or Liquibase.
- Experience managing declarative partitioning at scale.
- Experience with managed cloud PostgreSQL.
- Experience tuning PostgreSQL statistics, autovacuum, bloat, and lock contention.