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Agent guide: [/agents.md](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/agents.md). --- # Staff Database Administrator - **Company:** Altruist Corp - **Location:** Los Angeles, CA, United States - **Experience:** Expert - **Salary:** $181,000.0 - $265,000.0 - **Contract:** Permanent contract - **Skills:** Artificial Intelligence, Amazon Web Services, Build Automation, Big Data, Software as a Service, Databases, Continuous Integration, Data Conversion, Extract Transform Load (ETL), Data Stores, Relational Databases, Disaster Recovery, PostgreSQL, Liquibase, Load Testing, MySQL, Redis, Systems Integration, Transaction Data, Backup and Restore, Amazon ElastiCache, Snowflake, Change Data Capture, Indexer, Debezium, Kubernetes, Information Technology, Apache Kafka, Terraform - **Published:** September 7, 2026 - **Apply:** https://www.indeed.com/viewjob?jk=f45bf7dfc39b09a8 ## About the Role * Experience - 8+ years operating production relational databases at scale, ideally at a B2B financial services, fintech, or SaaS organization handling regulated or transactional data. * Deep PostgreSQL expertise: query planning and optimization, indexing, partitioning, vacuum and bloat management, locking and concurrency, replication, and connection management. * Hands-on experience running Aurora or RDS at multi-terabyte scale, including major-version upgrades, blue/green cutovers, and parameter and storage tuning. * Proven multi-region disaster recovery design: defining and defending RTO and RPO targets, cross-region replication, promotion and failback mechanics, and validated backup and restore. * Practical experience with change data capture and data movement - Debezium, Kafka, or AWS DMS - and with diagnosing replication lag and correctness issues. * Comfort working as code: Terraform, CI/CD pipelines, Kubernetes, and version-controlled schema migration tooling such as Flyway or Liquibase. * Strong observability instincts - you reach for pg_stat_statements, wait events, and dashboards before you reach for a guess. * Education - Ideally a B.A. / B.S. in a relevant field such as Computer Science or a related discipline, but experience and understanding matter just as much. * Staff-level scope - You set technical direction beyond your own work, lead multi-quarter programs across teams, and influence without needing authority to do it. * Ownership - The pride you put into every aspect of your work is unparalleled and undeniable. * Superb communication - Intentional dialogue is a superpower. You listen as well as you share your perspective with others. * Resilience - We are inspired by your unwavering determination to achieve success, no matter the adversity you face along the way. * Assurance - Your confidence is brilliant, yet ego-less. You possess a strong knowledge base, the ability to discover the unknown, and are open to differing perspectives. * Creative problem solving - Identifying the problem is simply not enough. You are instinctually creative in your approach to finding solutions to roadblocks. Bonus points * Expertise with AI (Claude) best practices, and an interest in building agentic automation for database operations. * Experience splitting a monolithic database into domain-owned clusters, or introducing sharding to a multi-tenant system already in production. * MySQL, Snowflake, ElastiCache/Redis, or OpenSearch operational experience alongside PostgreSQL. * Kafka or Amazon MSK operations, including connector fleets and upgrade planning. * Experience supporting a large-scale data migration or platform integration, including historic data conversion into a canonical model. * Familiarity with SOC 1, SOC 2, or similar audited control environments. * Knowledge of brokerage, clearing, or custody platforms and the financial services industry. ## Description * Own the production PostgreSQL estate end to end - multi-terabyte Aurora clusters across clearing, broker-dealer, and internal platform workloads - including capacity, performance, availability, and cost. * Lead multi-region resilience for data stores: convert production clusters to Aurora Global Database, instrument replication lag against tiered RTO and RPO commitments, and own documented failover, failback, and recurring recovery drills. * Drive database segmentation. Carve our most critical domains out of shared clusters into dedicated ones with their own read paths, so failover, upgrades, and blast radius are scoped per domain rather than per fleet. * Architect for an order-of-magnitude increase in accounts, positions, and daily transaction volume: capacity modeling, tenant-aware partitioning and sharding strategy, per-domain read replicas, continuous aggregates and materialized views, connection pooling, and load testing ahead of demand. * Own the upgrade program. Plan and execute major-version upgrades across the fleet with minimal downtime, and keep engine versions current enough that they never gate replication or recovery capability. * Own change data capture and data movement - Debezium, Kafka/MSK, and AWS DMS - for throughput, lag, and correctness, including re-architecting single-threaded vendor replication paths into parallel, partitioned pipelines. * Raise the bar on schema-change governance: review standards for migrations, index and locking review, and automated guardrails so unsafe changes are caught before they reach production rather than during market hours. * Partner with security and compliance on encryption, row-level security, least-privilege access, and the evidence our SOC 1 and regulatory obligations depend on. * Be a senior escalation point for database-driven incidents, and turn each one into a durable fix, a runbook, or an alert rather than a repeat. * Build automation and AI-assisted tooling that makes routine database work self-serve for product engineers, and mentor engineers across the org on data modeling, query design, and operating databases at scale. ## Related Videos - [Postgres in the Age of AI (and Devin)](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/videos/1042-postgres-in-the-age-of-ai-and-devin) - [Reducing LLM Calls with Vector Search Patterns - Raphael De Lio (Redis)](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/videos/1714-reducing-llm-calls-with-vector-search-patterns-raphael-de-lio-redis) - [MySQL Protocol Features You Should Be Aware Of](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/videos/100267-mysql-protocol-features-you-should-be-aware-of) - [Dynamic Entities in .NET: Building Low-Code Systems on Top of Entity Framework Core](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/videos/100218-dynamic-entities-in-net-building-low-code-systems-on-top-of-entity-framework-core) - [Optimizing Discovery: PostgreSQL's Role in Transforming GetYourGuide's Search](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/videos/1647-optimizing-discovery-postgresql-s-role-in-transforming-getyourguide-s-search) - [Accelerating Authentication Architecture: Taking Passwordless to the Next Level](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/videos/733-accelerating-authentication-architecture-taking-passwordless-to-the-next-level) ## Related Articles - [How We Built a Worry-Free System That Runs for 10+ Years – And What We’d Do Again](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/magazine/751-how-we-built-a-worry-free-system-that-runs-for-10-years-and-what-we-d-do-again) - [Highest Paying Tech Companies for Developers](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/magazine/220-highest-paying-tech-companies-for-developers) - [Coffee with Developers - Maria Apazoglou - Making AI understandable for all in production](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/magazine/475-coffee-with-developers-maria-apazoglou-making-ai-understandable-for-all-in-production) - [Making Data Warehouses Fast: A Developer’s Story](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/magazine/107-making-data-warehouses-fast-a-developer-s-story) - [Dev Digest 120 - Apple and peers](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/magazine/455-dev-digest-120-apple-and-peers) - [Graph and AI Trends 2026: Why Is AI Running but Not Yet Delivering?](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/magazine/680-graph-and-ai-trends-2026-why-is-ai-running-but-not-yet-delivering)