Staff Database Platform Engineer

Demandbase

Staff Database Platform Engineer designing and evolving database platforms for Demandbase’s cloud-native applications and improving database reliability.

Posted 4/29/2026full-timeRemote • 🇺🇸 United StatesLeadWebsite

Tech Stack

Tools & technologies

AWSBigQueryCloudDynamoDBETLGrafanaKubernetesLinuxMicroservicesMySQLPostgresPrometheusPythonTerraform

About the role

Key responsibilities & impact

Design and implement self-service database platforms that enable provisioning, scaling, and secure operations across AWS (RDS, Aurora, DynamoDB) and other cloud-native stores.
Develop Infrastructure-as-Code solutions (Terraform, Helm, GitLab CI/CD, Kubernetes Operators) to eliminate manual database operations and improve reliability.
Establish architectural standards and best practices for service-level databases in microservices environments (Postgres, MySQL, DynamoDB, etc.).
Evaluate and guide database architecture decisions for analytical and ETL workloads, balancing performance, scalability, and cost across technologies (RDS/Aurora, BigQuery, Iceberg, and other cloud-native solutions).
Build and maintain observability frameworks (Prometheus, Grafana, Datadog, OpenSearch) to ensure database health and operational excellence at scale.
Enhance system reliability through proactive monitoring, performance tuning, automation, and documentation.
Define and drive the technical roadmap for database platform modernization aligned with broader engineering strategy.
Lead initiatives to reduce operational risk, cost, and complexity across legacy and monolithic database systems.
Guide architectural transitions from shared monolithic databases to decentralized, service-owned database models.
Partner with cross-functional stakeholders to ensure database architecture supports product scalability and business growth.
Balance innovation with operational stability to maintain high availability for mission-critical systems.
Collaborate with product and platform teams on schema design, query optimization, and database best practices.
Provide tooling, documentation, and onboarding frameworks that empower engineering teams to safely manage their own databases.
Mentor DBREs in evolving from traditional DBA practices toward platform engineering and automation-first approaches.
Participate in incident response and postmortems, driving continuous improvement across database operations.
Foster a culture of shift-left ownership, reliability engineering, and engineering excellence.

Requirements

What you’ll need

10+ years of experience in database reliability engineering, platform engineering, or cloud infrastructure roles
Strong expertise in Infrastructure-as-Code and automation tools such as Terraform, Helm, GitLab CI/CD, and Kubernetes Operators
Hands-on experience with cloud-managed relational databases (PostgreSQL/MySQL on RDS/Aurora) and cloud-native databases (DynamoDB)
Deep knowledge of performance tuning, query optimization, indexing strategies, and schema design
Experience modernizing and migrating legacy databases into scalable, fit-for-purpose systems in partnership with data engineering teams
Strong Linux fundamentals and scripting experience (Python, Shell)
Hands-on experience with observability and monitoring stacks (Prometheus, Grafana, Datadog, OpenSearch, or similar)
Demonstrated ability to mentor DBREs/DBAs and influence engineering culture toward automation and service ownership
Excellent communication skills and ability to collaborate effectively across product, platform, DBRE, and data teams.

Benefits

Comp & perks

options for up to 100% paid Medical and Vision premiums for employees
a flexible PTO policy
paid holidays
access to mental health and wellness resources
401(k) with pre-tax, after tax, and roth options
short-term/long-term disability
life insurance
other great benefits

ATS Keywords

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Applicant Tracking System Keywords

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Hard Skills & Tools

database reliability engineeringplatform engineeringcloud infrastructureInfrastructure-as-Codeperformance tuningquery optimizationindexing strategiesschema designautomationscripting

Soft Skills

mentoringcollaborationcommunicationleadershipproblem-solvingcontinuous improvementinnovationoperational stabilitycross-functional partnershipculture building