PostgreSQL Database Engineer (with Software Engineering Expertise)

About the Role

We are looking for a highly skilled Senior PostgreSQL Database Engineer with strong software engineering experience to design, optimize, and maintain our database platforms while also contributing to backend application development and tooling. The ideal candidate is equally comfortable deep-diving into PostgreSQL internals as they are building automation, middleware, and integration code that connects data systems to applications.This role necessitates a robust combination of practical technical proficiency and the capability to guide enterprise data management strategies, with PostgreSQL serving as a foundational platform.

This is a hands-on engineering role requiring expertise in both database operations and software development, with a focus on scalability, performance, and reliability.

Key Responsibilities

Database Architecture & Optimization

• Design and implement scalable PostgreSQL database architectures for high availability, partitioning, replication, and disaster recovery.
• Analyze and optimize complex queries, indexing strategies, and database configurations.
• Monitor performance and proactively address bottlenecks in queries and application data flows.
• Implement strong security standards (role-based access control, encryption, security best practices), and ensure compliance with organizational and regulatory requirements.
• Tuning databases through query analysis (EXPLAIN plans), optimized indexing (B-tree, GIN, GiST), configuration adjustments, and query rewriting; implementing partitioning and materialized views as needed for performance at scale.
• Acting as a subject matter expert for development, operations, and business teams; providing guidance on best practices, reviewing code, conducting technical documentation, and mentoring database and engineering staff.
• Proficiency in PostgreSQL and Oracle data types is essential for seamless migrations.

Software Engineering & Automation

• Develop tools, scripts, and services to automate database provisioning, monitoring, backups, migrations, and deployments.
• Write backend services or APIs that integrate with PostgreSQL for application use cases.
• Implement PL/pgSQL functions, triggers, procedures to support business logic.

Reliability, Security & Compliance

• Implement robust database security policies, encryption, and role-based access controls.
• Design and maintain high availability and disaster recovery strategies.
• Ensure compliance with industry regulations and internal security standards.

Collaboration & Leadership

• Mentor developers and junior database engineers on SQL optimization, schema design, and performance tuning.
• Work closely with DevOps/SRE teams on CI/CD pipelines for database changes.
• Participate in incident response and root cause analysis for production database issues.

Required Qualifications

• 7+ years of professional experience with PostgreSQL in large-scale, production environments.
• Strong SQL and PL/pgSQL skills, with deep understanding of PostgreSQL internals.
• Proven experience in software development (Strong expert level C/C++, Python, Go or Java)
• Experience with schema design, indexing strategies, and data partitioning.
• Hands-on experience with replication, backup, and failover solutions.
• Proficiency in Linux/Unix, shell scripting and Kubernetes.
• Familiarity with version control (Git) and CI/CD practices.
• Strong debugging and performance tuning skills across both database and application layers.
• Experience with containerized environments (Docker, Kubernetes).
• Experience with cloud-managed PostgreSQL services
• Background in migrating from other database platforms (e.g., Oracle, MySQL) to PostgreSQL.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with microservices and REST API development.
• Familiarity with message queues, event-driven architectures, or streaming platforms (Kafka, Debezium).
• Proficiency in Logical Decoding within PostgreSQL and experience with an open-source Change Data Capture (CDC) platform leveraging this capability are highly advantageous for this position, particularly in supporting real-time analytics pipelines.

Soft Skills

• Strong analytical thinking and problem-solving skills.
• Excellent communication and cross-team collaboration abilities.
• Ability to balance short-term incident resolution with long-term architecture improvements.
• Passion for clean, maintainable, and performant systems.
• Playing a key role in planning for future database growth, implementing new technologies, and setting standards for quality and performance across the organization.

Education

• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Software Engineering, or related field (or equivalent work experience).