Database Reliability Engineer – Availability and Recovery
The Elite Job
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Benefits offered by this job
Job summary
The Elite Job is seeking a Database Reliability Engineer – Availability and Recovery to ensure mission‑critical databases stay available, secure, and performant across on‑premises and cloud environments. You will design resilient architectures, implement backups and DR, optimize performance, and automate operational workflows in collaboration with DevOps, security, and application teams.
Ideal candidates have hands‑on experience with PostgreSQL/MySQL/SQL Server, NoSQL where relevant, and mastery
Qualifications
- Bachelor's degree or equivalent technical experience in a related field.
- Experience with both relational and NoSQL databases and DR/HA architectures.
- Proven ability to design, implement, and operate scalable database reliability solutions.
- Strong knowledge of backup, disaster recovery, and data protection practices.
- Familiarity with cloud-based database services and automation tools.
Responsibilities
- Design, implement, monitor, and maintain highly available database environments.
- Develop backup strategies, DR plans, and test recovery procedures.
- Optimize performance and capacity planning across distributed databases.
- Automate maintenance, monitoring, and remediation within CI/CD pipelines.
- Lead incident investigations and root cause analysis for database incidents.
- Collaborate with DevOps, security, and application teams to improve resilience.
Skills
Education
Tools
Job description
The Elite Job is seeking a skilled and detail-oriented Database Reliability Engineer – Availability and Recovery to support the reliability, performance, security, and continuous availability of mission‑critical database systems. The successful candidate will be responsible for designing, implementing, monitoring, and maintaining reliable database environments that support business operations, customer‑facing applications, and enterprise technology platforms.
This role combines database administration, site reliability engineering, performance optimization, automation, disaster recovery planning, and operational excellence. The Database Reliability Engineer will work closely with database administrators, software engineers, DevOps teams, cloud infrastructure specialists, cybersecurity professionals, and application owners to minimize downtime, prevent data loss, and maintain consistent database performance.
The ideal candidate will have practical experience with relational and non‑relational databases, high‑availability architectures, backup and recovery procedures, replication technologies, monitoring solutions, and automated operational workflows. They should be comfortable investigating complex technical issues, identifying root causes, implementing preventive measures, and improving database resilience in distributed and cloud‑based environments.
At The Elite Job, this position offers an opportunity to contribute to dependable technology services, strengthen business continuity, and develop scalable database reliability solutions that support long‑term organizational growth.
- Design, implement, and maintain highly available database architectures that meet business availability and reliability requirements.
- Configure database clustering, replication, failover mechanisms, and redundancy to reduce the impact of infrastructure or application failures.
- Monitor database health, uptime, connection availability, resource utilization, and service‑level indicators.
- Identify potential reliability risks and implement proactive measures to prevent unexpected outages.
- Establish database availability targets, operational standards, and reliability improvement plans.
- Participate in on‑call rotations and respond to critical database incidents according to established escalation procedures.
- Develop, maintain, and regularly validate database backup strategies, including full, incremental, differential, and transaction‑log backups where supported.
- Create and maintain disaster recovery procedures for critical databases and supporting infrastructure.
- Conduct recovery testing, failover simulations, and disaster recovery exercises to validate operational readiness.
- Define and maintain appropriate Recovery Time Objectives (RTOs) and Recovery Point Objectives (RPOs) in collaboration with business stakeholders.
- Investigate backup failures, replication delays, data corruption, and recovery‑related issues.
- Ensure backup copies are protected through appropriate access controls, encryption, retention policies, and secure storage.
- Maintain clear recovery runbooks and technical documentation to support timely restoration of database services.
- Analyze database workloads, query execution plans, indexing strategies, locking behavior, and resource consumption.
- Identify and resolve performance bottlenecks affecting application responsiveness and transaction processing.
- Optimize database configurations, connection pooling, caching, and query execution where appropriate.
- Monitor CPU, memory, storage capacity, disk I/O, and network performance to anticipate capacity constraints.
- Collaborate with application developers to improve inefficient queries, transaction patterns, and database access methods.
- Conduct capacity planning to support increasing transaction volumes and business growth.
- Automate routine database maintenance, backup validation, health checks, failover testing, and operational reporting.
- Develop scripts and tools using Python, Bash, PowerShell, or suitable database scripting languages.
- Integrate database monitoring and operational checks into CI/CD pipelines and infrastructure automation workflows where appropriate.
- Use Infrastructure as Code (IaC) tools to improve consistency and repeatability in database infrastructure provisioning.
- Reduce manual intervention by developing reliable self‑service operational processes and automated remediation procedures.
- Apply Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) principles to improve service resilience, reduce repetitive incidents, and enhance operational efficiency.
- Configure monitoring dashboards, alerts, and performance reports for database environments.
- Investigate database outages, connectivity problems, replication lag, resource exhaustion, and unexpected performance degradation.
- Lead or contribute to root cause analysis following significant database incidents.
- Document incident timelines, contributing factors, corrective actions, and preventive recommendations.
- Work with engineering and operations teams to resolve incidents and restore services within agreed recovery targets.
- Maintain actionable alerts that help teams detect and address issues before they affect end users.
- Support database deployments across on‑premises, hybrid‑cloud, and public‑cloud environments.
- Manage or support cloud database services such as Amazon RDS, Amazon Aurora, Azure SQL Database, Azure Database for PostgreSQL, and Google Cloud SQL, depending on organizational requirements.
- Implement cloud‑native backup, replication, monitoring, scaling, and recovery capabilities.
- Evaluate database architecture choices based on availability, scalability, operational complexity, and cost.
- Support database migrations, version upgrades, patching, and infrastructure changes while minimizing service disruption.
- Understand the reliability challenges of distributed systems, including consistency, replication, network failures, and regional outages.
- Apply database security best practices, including least‑privilege access, secure authentication, encryption, and access auditing.
- Coordinate with cybersecurity teams to address vulnerabilities, security findings, and database configuration risks.
- Support database patching and upgrades while maintaining availability and recovery readiness.
- Help ensure that backup retention, data handling, and recovery procedures comply with applicable organizational policies and regulatory requirements.
- Maintain accurate documentation of database configurations, access permissions, and operational controls.
- Work with developers, infrastructure engineers, DevOps specialists, and business teams to establish reliable database operating practices.
- Participate in architecture reviews, technical planning, production readiness assessments, and change‑management activities.
- Develop standard operating procedures, troubleshooting guides, recovery playbooks, and knowledge‑sharing materials.
- Recommend improvements to database architecture, monitoring coverage, operational processes, and incident response.
- Mentor team members and share knowledge about database reliability, performance engineering, and recovery best practices.
Bachelors degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Software Engineering, Computer Engineering, or a related technical discipline.
Equivalent professional experience and relevant technical certifications may be considered.
Additional training in cloud computing, database administration, site reliability engineering, or distributed systems is advantageous.
- Strong knowledge of relational database management systems, such as PostgreSQL, MySQL, Microsoft SQL Server, or Oracle Database.
- Familiarity with NoSQL technologies such as MongoDB, Redis, or other distributed data platforms is beneficial.
- Practical understanding of database replication, clustering, failover, high availability, and disaster recovery.
- Experience with backup management, restoration procedures, point‑in‑time recovery, and recovery validation.
- Ability to analyze SQL queries, execution plans, indexing, locking, and transaction behavior.
- Proficiency in at least one scripting or programming language, such as Python, Bash, or PowerShell.
- Knowledge of Linux and/or Windows server administration, networking fundamentals, storage systems, and system troubleshooting.
- Familiarity with monitoring and observability platforms such as Prometheus, Grafana, Datadog, or equivalent tools.
- Understanding of version control systems such as Git and automation tools such as Terraform, Ansible, or similar technologies.
- Knowledge of cloud database services and cloud infrastructure concepts.
- Familiarity with incident management, change control, post‑incident reviews, and operational documentation.
- Typically 3–5 years of relevant experience in database administration, database engineering, site reliability engineering, infrastructure engineering, or production operations.
- Demonstrated experience supporting production database environments where availability, data integrity, and performance are important.
- Hands‑on experience implementing or maintaining backup, recovery, replication, and high‑availability solutions.
- Experience diagnosing database outages, performance issues, connectivity failures, and infrastructure‑related incidents.
- Practical knowledge of database monitoring, capacity planning, patching, and routine maintenance.
- Experience with cloud‑hosted database platforms and automation is highly desirable.
- Familiarity with production incident response and root cause analysis is preferred.
- Candidates with strong technical fundamentals, relevant projects, and demonstrable database reliability skills may be considered for suitable junior‑level opportunities.
Work Schedule: Full‑time position.
Standard Hours: Typically 40 hours per week, subject to team requirements and employment arrangements.
Work Arrangement: Remote, hybrid, or office‑based, depending on the position and business needs.
Flexibility: Working hours may require coordination across time zones when supporting distributed teams.
On‑Call Responsibilities: Participation in a scheduled on‑call rotation may be required to support critical database services.
Incident Response: Occasional work outside standard business hours may be necessary during major incidents, planned maintenance, recovery testing, or production deployments.
Planned Maintenance: Database upgrades, patching, failover exercises, and other high‑impact activities should be scheduled in approved maintenance windows wherever possible.
Specific working hours, time‑zone expectations, and on‑call arrangements will be communicated during the recruitment process.
Strong understanding of database architecture, transaction processing, data consistency, replication, and distributed systems.
Knowledge of high‑availability design, fault tolerance, disaster recovery, and business continuity principles.
Understanding of performance tuning, database capacity planning, and infrastructure resource management.
Awareness of security controls, data protection practices, and operational risk management.
Ability to evaluate reliability trade‑offs involving availability, consistency, performance, and cost.
- Ability to investigate complex technical problems using logs, metrics, traces, database diagnostics, and system‑level information.
- Strong troubleshooting skills and a structured approach to identifying root causes.
- Ability to assess failure scenarios and develop practical preventive and corrective measures.
- Confidence in interpreting performance trends and recommending improvements based on evidence.
- Clear written and verbal communication skills.
- Ability to explain technical incidents, risks, and recovery procedures to technical and non‑technical stakeholders.
- Strong teamwork and cross‑functional collaboration skills.
- Ability to produce accurate documentation, incident reports, and operational procedures.
- Strong attention to detail and commitment to data integrity.
- A proactive approach to reliability improvement and operational risk reduction.
- Ability to prioritize tasks in time‑sensitive production environments.
- Accountability, sound judgment, and respect for established security procedures.
- Willingness to learn new technologies and continuously improve technical expertise.
- Commitment to maintaining reliable, secure, and well‑documented database systems.
The Elite Job aims to provide a supportive professional environment in which employees can strengthen their technical expertise and contribute to meaningful engineering initiatives. Depending on the employment arrangement, location, and applicable company policies, benefits may include:
- Competitive Compensation: Salary aligned with the roles responsibilities, technical expertise, experience, and market conditions.
- Flexible Work Options: Remote or hybrid working opportunities where supported by the position.
- Professional Development: Opportunities to improve skills in database engineering, cloud technologies, automation, and reliability practices.
- Certification Support: Potential assistance with relevant database, cloud, and infrastructure certifications, subject to company policy.
- Career Advancement: Opportunities to progress into senior database engineering, database architecture, cloud reliability, or SRE leadership roles.
- Collaborative Work Environment: Opportunities to work with engineering, infrastructure, security, and application development teams.
- Modern Technology Exposure: Experience with contemporary database platforms, monitoring solutions, automation frameworks, and cloud services.
- Well‑Being and Work‑Life Balance: Supportive work practices and reasonable scheduling, subject to operational and on‑call requirements.
- Recognition and Performance Development: Feedback and development opportunities based on contributions, technical growth, and business impact.
- Final benefits and eligibility will be confirmed in the official employment offer.
Joining The Elite Job as a Database Reliability Engineer – Availability and Recovery offers the opportunity to work on essential technology challenges where reliability, resilience, and data protection directly support business success.
In this role, you will help build and maintain database environments that organizations can depend on. Your work will contribute to reducing downtime, improving recovery readiness, strengthening operational security, and creating more predictable technology services.
You will have opportunities to apply engineering principles to real‑world database challenges, automate repetitive processes, improve monitoring capabilities, and collaborate with professionals across multiple technology disciplines.
The position is suited to engineers who enjoy solving complex problems, improving system resilience, and developing practical solutions that prevent incidents rather than simply reacting to them.
The Elite Job values technical curiosity, accountability, teamwork, continuous improvement, and a commitment to quality. As the role develops, successful employees may have opportunities to expand their responsibilities into database architecture, cloud infrastructure, performance engineering, or site reliability engineering.
If you are motivated by dependable systems, thoughtful engineering, and continuous technical development, this role offers a meaningful opportunity to contribute to reliable and scalable technology operations.
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