Senior Cassandra Database Engineer

The Opportunity: We are seeking a highly skilled Cassandra DBA / Engineer to design, build, optimize, and support modern database platforms across enterprise environments. This role will partner with application development, infrastructure, architecture, and operations teams to deliver scalable, reliable, and high-performing data solutions that support critical business applications.

The ideal candidate brings strong expertise in Cassandra database administration, database engineering, performance tuning, cluster management, automation, backup and recovery, JVM/system tuning, monitoring, troubleshooting, and cloud technologies, with a passion for building resilient data platforms and driving continuous improvements through innovation and automation.
 

• Role: Cassandra DBA / Engineer
• Experience: 7+ Years
• Work Location: Phoenix, AZ
• Project Duration: 12+ Months Contract

Responsibilities

• Design, develop, configure, and maintain enterprise-grade highly available and scalable Cassandra clusters supporting business-critical applications and services.
• Manage and administer Cassandra and other NoSQL/open-source database platforms to ensure stability, availability, reliability, and optimal performance.
• Demonstrate strong understanding of Cassandra architecture, replication strategies, consistency levels, partitioning, data modeling, token distribution, and multi-data-center deployments.
• Design Cassandra cluster topology and perform capacity planning based on application workloads, scalability, availability, and performance requirements.
• Perform Cassandra performance analysis and tuning to optimize read/write performance, throughput, and latency.
• Tune Cassandra compaction strategies, caching, consistency levels, tombstones, SSTables, and database configuration parameters.
• Identify and resolve hot partitions, slow queries, high latency, and database or infrastructure resource bottlenecks.
• Manage Cassandra cluster lifecycle activities including installations, upgrades, migrations, patching, capacity expansion, and configuration changes.
• Add, replace, remove, and safely decommission Cassandra nodes while maintaining cluster availability and data integrity.
• Perform cluster expansion and capacity upgrades with minimal production impact.
• Manage token distribution, node bootstrap and streaming, repair, cleanup, and cluster rebalancing activities.
• Implement and maintain Cassandra backup and restore strategies, including snapshots and incremental backups.
• Support point-in-time recovery where supported by the organization's backup solution and conduct recovery testing.
• Develop and support disaster-recovery procedures and ensure Cassandra environments meet availability and business continuity requirements.
• Tune Cassandra JVM heap, garbage collection, memory, and related configuration settings.
• Troubleshoot JVM and system-level issues including GC pauses, heap pressure, CPU utilization, disk I/O, memory, and storage performance.
• Tune Linux/OS and storage configurations to support Cassandra database workloads.
• Monitor Cassandra cluster health, availability, latency, throughput, disk usage, compactions, dropped messages, GC activity, repairs, and overall capacity.
• Troubleshoot complex production issues including node failures, high latency, timeouts, replica inconsistencies, capacity problems, and cluster instability.
• Use nodetool, Cassandra logs, metrics, tracing, and monitoring/alerting platforms to diagnose and resolve database issues.
• Proactively identify opportunities for performance optimization, scalability improvements, reliability, and operational efficiency.
• Develop and implement database automation solutions to streamline administration, deployment, maintenance, monitoring, and operational processes.
• Develop scripts, utilities, and engineering tools using technologies such as Python, Shell Scripting, Java, or Go.
• Automate database administration and infrastructure processes using Ansible and other automation frameworks.
• Collaborate with architecture and business teams to translate data requirements into effective conceptual, logical, and physical data models.
• Support distributed and highly available database environments while ensuring reliability, resiliency, and fault tolerance.
• Work closely with application development, infrastructure, platform engineering, and support teams to ensure seamless integration of Cassandra database services.
• Contribute to database standards, governance practices, operational procedures, and engineering best practices.
• Implement monitoring, alerting, and observability solutions to improve visibility into database health and performance.
• Participate in cloud adoption initiatives and support Cassandra database workloads across modern cloud platforms.
• Contribute to CI/CD initiatives and help integrate database deployment and operational processes into automated delivery pipelines.
• Support Agile delivery teams by participating in sprint planning, technical reviews, deployments, production support, and continuous improvement activities.

Required Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Information Technology, or a related technical discipline; advanced degree preferred.
• 5+ years of professional experience in database engineering, database development, or database administration.
• Strong hands-on experience with Cassandra database administration and engineering in enterprise production environments.
• Strong understanding of Cassandra architecture, replication, consistency levels, partitioning, data modeling, token distribution, and multi-DC deployments.
• Experience designing and managing highly available, scalable, and fault-tolerant Cassandra clusters.
• Hands-on experience with Cassandra node management, including node addition, replacement, removal, decommissioning, bootstrap, streaming, repair, cleanup, and cluster rebalancing.
• Experience with Cassandra capacity planning, cluster topology design, expansion, and infrastructure upgrades.
• Strong experience with Cassandra performance analysis and tuning, including:
  • Read/write performance and latency
  • Compaction
  • Caching
  • Consistency levels
  • Tombstones
  • SSTables
  • Hot partitions
  • Slow queries
  • Cassandra configuration
• Experience managing operational activities such as:
  • Database upgrades and migrations
  • Patch management
  • Capacity planning and expansion
  • Backup and recovery
  • Performance analysis and tuning
  • High availability and disaster recovery implementations
• Strong knowledge of Cassandra backup and recovery, including snapshots, incremental backups, restore procedures, and recovery testing.
• Strong understanding of JVM heap, garbage collection, memory management, CPU utilization, disk I/O, Linux/OS, and storage tuning.
• Strong hands-on experience troubleshooting Cassandra production environments using nodetool, Cassandra logs, metrics, tracing, and monitoring tools.
• Strong understanding of database architecture, storage concepts, indexing strategies, replication mechanisms, and query optimization.
• Experience creating and maintaining conceptual, logical, and physical data models.
• Ability to collaborate effectively with development, infrastructure, architecture, and production support teams.
• Experience supporting distributed systems and multi-tier application environments.
• Proficiency in one or more programming or scripting languages such as:
  • Python
  • Shell Scripting
  • Java
  • Go
• Understanding of API-driven architectures and modern application integration patterns.
• Familiarity with Agile methodologies and software delivery practices.
• Experience working with Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery pipelines.
• Strong troubleshooting, analytical, and problem-solving capabilities.
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience automating Cassandra database administration and infrastructure processes using Ansible.
• Experience developing custom automation frameworks and operational tooling for database environments.
• Exposure to cloud platforms such as:
  • Amazon Web Services (AWS)
  • Google Cloud Platform (GCP)
  • Microsoft Azure
• Knowledge of cloud-native Cassandra deployment and management practices.
• Experience with database monitoring, observability, and performance management solutions.
• Familiarity with DevOps and Infrastructure-as-Code principles.
• Exposure to modern web application development technologies and frameworks.
• Experience supporting large-scale enterprise Cassandra environments.
• Understanding of security, compliance, and governance considerations within database ecosystems.
• Knowledge of CI/CD automation tools and deployment frameworks.
• Experience with other database technologies such as:
  • PostgreSQL
  • Oracle Database
  • Couchbase
  • MongoDB

Technologent is an Equal Opportunity Employer -- EEO/AA Employer/Vet/Disabled -- for reasonable accommodations, please contact us at 

hr@technologent.com

Technologent is a Global Provider of Edge-to-Edge Information Technology Solutions and Services for Fortune 1000 and SMB companies. We offer a unique blend of business practices that are aligned to solve for top CIO concerns. Our core competencies focus on data center infrastructure, business continuity, data protection, service automation and orchestration, continuous intelligence, monitoring, connectivity, collaboration and cybersecurity. These practices are supported by our professional services, digital transformation services and financial services offerings. By providing custom solutions and services designed to fit your business needs, we enable your organization to be more agile, responsive and competitive. Technologent empowers your company to ascend to the next level in IT.

Headquartered in Irvine, CA, Technologent has offices throughout the US and proudly serves clients around the world. When partnering with Technologent, organizations benefit from the highest caliber of professionals, committed to delivering exceptional business outcomes backed by unmatched service and support.