Site Reliability Engineer III, DBA

Job Description: • Design, deploy, and own highly available database architecture for Vitess (distributed MySQL) and Cassandra • Establish and document operational procedures, runbooks, and escalation guidance for Level 1 and Level 2 SRE Database Engineers • Optimize database performance through query tuning, indexing strategies, schema design, and capacity planning • Own database backup, recovery, replication, and disaster recovery strategies • Perform and validate disaster recovery testing and database recovery procedures • Drive database security, access control, patching, hardening, and compliance practices • Partner with DBA and Data Infrastructure teams on resharding, capacity planning, replication, and architecture decisions for sharded MySQL environments • Support availability and durability of critical services across production environments • Monitor service health using SLIs, SLOs, error budgets, monitoring, logging, and alerting platforms • Participate in on-call rotations, incident response, root cause analysis, and post-incident reviews • Serve as an escalation point for complex database production incidents • Develop automation for operational and database administration tasks • Contribute to monitoring, logging, and alerting frameworks including Prometheus, Grafana, Catchpoint, and ELK • Integrate operational runbooks and incident response workflows with FireHydrant • Work with CI/CD pipelines, configuration management, and infrastructure-as-code tools including Terraform, Ansible, and Jenkins • Develop scripts using Bash, Python, Go, or similar technologies • Operate and troubleshoot containerized production environments using Kubernetes and Docker • Lead Production Readiness Reviews and support operational readiness of new database-backed services • Build training plans, onboarding materials, and technical documentation for Level 1 and Level 2 SRE Database Engineers • Partner with Engineering, Product, Operations, and DBA/Data Infrastructure teams on reliability initiatives • Assist with capacity planning, disaster recovery exercises, database migrations, and infrastructure projects • Work with vendors and service providers to troubleshoot service issues and track SLA performance • Respond to and resolve production database, infrastructure, and service incidents • Troubleshoot and escalate database, Linux, networking, application, and infrastructure issues • Identify recurring issues and develop long-term corrective actions to improve reliability Requirements: • 6–8 years of experience in site reliability engineering, systems engineering, infrastructure operations, database engineering, or similar roles, with meaningful experience supporting production database systems • Deep hands-on experience with MySQL and distributed or sharded database systems • Experience with Vitess in a production environment strongly preferred • Experience administering and supporting NoSQL databases such as Cassandra • Experience designing high-availability database architecture, replication topology, backup strategies, and disaster recovery processes • Strong SQL skills, including query performance analysis, indexing, schema design, and troubleshooting • Solid Linux systems administration and troubleshooting skills • Experience with security-focused operations including patching, system hardening, access controls, and vulnerability remediation • Strong understanding of service reliability concepts including monitoring, alerting, incident response, root cause analysis, SLIs, SLOs, and error budgets • Experience working with containers and orchestration platforms including Kubernetes and Docker • Comfortable operating in Kubernetes and Vitess environments using tools such as kubectl, mysqlsh, and Vitess keyspaces • Experience with infrastructure and configuration management technologies including Terraform, Ansible, Jenkins, and HashiCorp products such as Vault and Nomad • Proficiency in at least one scripting language such as Python, Bash, or Go • Experience establishing operational procedures, runbooks, documentation, and escalation processes • Experience mentoring, training, or helping onboard engineers into complex technical environments • Experience in SaaS, cloud services, service provider, or large-scale distributed systems environments preferred • Experience with AWS, GCP, Azure, or similar cloud platforms preferred • Familiarity with ITIL/OSS practices and SLA/SLO management preferred • Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent professional experience Benefits: • Healthcare for family, including dental and vision • Competitive compensation and 401K • RSU grants for full-time employees • ESPP program • Flexible vacation policy • Maternity & paternity leave • MacBook Pro to use for work, plus a generous stipend to personalize your workstation • Childcare bonus (human children only) • Fertility treatment and support • Learning & development program • Commuter benefits • Culture that supports a healthy work-life balance