Database Administrator - Postgres Database Operations

Exciting PostgreSQL Database Operations Contractor opportunity with an established firm. The ideal candidate will be responsible for maintaining and operating our PostgreSQL databases in a Kubernetes environment powered by AWS EKS. This is a fully remote role. Candidates must be located in the Bay Area, CA, Seattle, WA, or Salt Lake City, UT.

The Operational Database Platform team builds and maintains scalable, reliable, and secure software solutions powering our Operational Database Platform. We handle massive data volumes, ensuring high performance, redundancy, and security.

Contract Duration: 3 Months (+ extensions)

Required Skills & Experience

Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent work experience.

Minimum 5 years of Postgresql database operator experience.

Strong SQL knowledge

Hands-on experience with PostgreSQL patching, query tuning, and database administration tasks.

Familiarity with Kubernetes and AWS EKS environments for deploying and managing databases.

Experience with monitoring tools such as CloudWatch, Datadog, Splunk and OpsGenie

Experience with configuration management tools such as Terraform, Ansible, Puppet for managing infrastructure and deployments.

Experience with version Control & CI/CD tools such as Git, ArgoCD and GitLab.

Experience with database patching and upgrade processes

Excellent problem-solving and troubleshooting skills

Strong communication skills and ability to work in a team environment

Understanding of data governance principles.

Nice to have:

Postgresql certifications preferred

AWS EKS certifications preferred

SQL certifications preferred

What You Will Be Doing

This contractor role requires a high level of expertise in Oracle RDS database operations and the ability to handle a wide range of database operations and maintenance tasks.

Data Governance: Support data governance tasks as needed (specific details may vary, but estimated 20 tasks/month).

Patching: Perform PostgreSQL database patching as required, including potential minor version patching of 224 databases with a defined zero-downtime playbook.

Code Reviews: Assist with code reviews for DDL and DML changes to the databases, collaborating with developers on deployments.

Storage Management: Handle storage management tasks for instances and clusters, including volume size increases and storage type changes through Merge Requests (MRs) in the DataOps repository, and deployment via ArgoCD. Query and Database Tuning/Slack

Support: Investigate and troubleshoot poorly performing queries, collaborate with Engineering Product Development (EPD) teams to update query logic or suggest database index changes via migrations. Provide support via Slack for database-related inquiries.

Database Creation: Create new databases for services following a defined playbook.

Table Partitioning: Assist in table partitioning for designated databases and potentially proactively identify other tables suitable for partitioning.

Ad-hoc Requests: Address ad-hoc database-related requests from engineers, such as updating primary keys or migrating data.

Kubernetes/EKS: Familiarity with operating PostgreSQL within a Kubernetes environment powered by AWS EKS is essential.

CI/CD: Utilize and interact with CI/CD pipelines, particularly ArgoCD, for deployments and infrastructure changes.