Senior Database Administrator (PostgreSQL)

Our client is a mid-market B2B SaaS company with 800 paying customers and a multi-tenant Postgres environment. They're hiring a remote Senior PostgreSQL Database Administrator.

Responsibilities

• Own production PostgreSQL health across 12 Aurora clusters: capacity planning, query performance, replication health, and backup verification
• Lead a quarterly performance review cycle: identify the top 20 worst queries per cluster and partner with product teams on fixes
• Maintain index strategy across the platform; remove unused indexes, add missing ones, and periodically REINDEX large tables
• Lead Postgres major-version upgrade work, including schema and extension compatibility analysis
• Build and maintain self-service tooling for engineers (slow query reports, schema-change linters, query plan visualization)
• Set and enforce schema-change standards (online migrations, backfills, lock-aware DDL) across the engineering org
• Partner with security on data-classification, encryption at rest, audit logging, and access reviews
• Mentor product engineers on Postgres internals, EXPLAIN/ANALYZE, and query optimization

Requirements

• 7+ years of production PostgreSQL administration in a high-growth SaaS or similar environment
• Deep knowledge of Postgres internals: MVCC, vacuum, WAL, autovacuum, planner, and indexing strategies (B-tree, GIN, BRIN, partial)
• Hands-on experience with AWS Aurora PostgreSQL or RDS PostgreSQL in production
• Strong SQL skills and ability to read EXPLAIN ANALYZE plans and spot subtle performance issues
• Experience leading major-version upgrades (12 to 14 to 16, etc.) in production
• Comfort with Terraform and at least one scripting language (Python or Bash) for automation
• Experience with online schema migration tools (gh-ost, pg-osc, or comparable patterns)
• Excellent written communication for design reviews, runbooks, and post-incident reviews

Benefits

• Base salary $130,000-$170,000 plus 10% target annual bonus
• Equity grant with 4-year vest, 1-year cliff
• Medical, dental, and vision (employer pays 100% of employee premium, 60% of dependents)
• 401(k) with 4% match
• $2,500 annual learning and conference budget (PGConf, AWS re:Invent pre-approved)
• $1,500 home office stipend plus $100/month internet reimbursement
• 20 days PTO plus 11 paid holidays plus winter shutdown week
• No on-call rotation