Data Engineer

ELMO; Sydney; On-site; AUD 150,000 - 190,000; Full time

Job summary

ELMO Software Pty Ltd in Sydney, Australia, seeks a hands-on Database & Data Platform Engineer to own production databases and analytics pipelines. You will tune queries, manage AWS RDS and Snowflake environments, and build reliable data products that power ELMO's HR tech platform.

You'll partner with analytics and AI teams, implement data quality practices, and uphold security standards including ISO 27001. This role blends DBA fundamentals with data engineering in a fast-growing company.

Qualifications

• Extensive DBA experience with AWS RDS (MySQL/SQL Server) and PostgreSQL variants.
• Proven query tuning, indexing, and performance optimization skills.
• Experience delivering data pipelines with Snowflake, dbt and Airflow.
• Strong Python coding and SQL proficiency; working knowledge of IAM and data security.
• Excellent communication with technical and non-technical stakeholders; ISO27001 awareness.

Responsibilities

• Administer and optimise production databases (MySQL/SQL Server/Aurora PostgreSQL).
• Monitor health, performance, capacity, and security; manage upgrades.
• Own data pipelines in Snowflake; build and maintain dbt models.
• Collaborate with analytics/AI teams to improve data platforms.
• Ensure cost efficiency in Snowflake/AWS and enforce data governance.

Skills

DBA experience

MySQL

SQL Server

Aurora PostgreSQL

Query optimisation

Python

SQL

AWS data services

Kafka / streaming data

Data quality frameworks

HR/payroll domain knowledge

Stakeholder communication

ISO 27001 awareness

Tools

Snowflake

dbt

Airflow

Terraform

CloudFormation

AI tooling (MCP agents)

Job description

Founded in 2002, ELMO Software is the trusted provider of HR technology solutions to 2,000+ mid-sized organisations and more than one million end users across Australia and New Zealand.With a comprehensive suite of ISO-certified solutions that span the full employee lifecycle, ELMO Software is designed to scale as organisations grow. Flexible and configurable, ELMO’s one-stop HRIS fits to your specific needs and workflows.Through powerful technology, automation, data and analytics, ELMO Software empowers HR professionals to play an integral role in company decision making.

Life & Culture...

At ELMO you will be joining an epic team with the opportunity to make a big impact. We foster an authentic, collaborative, fun working environment and being an ELMOnian means you're part of an amazing team that will push you to grow, support you with challenges and allow you to shine. Some of our benefits include:

• Paid Parental leave - 12 weeks primary, 6 weeks secondary
• Birthday leave, YOU day each year, as well as connecting people leave (up to 2weeks working from anywhere)
• Inhouse Learning and Development initiatives
• ELMO Social and Diversity clubs
• Mental Health/EAP programs
• Flare Benefits (great discounts, novated leasing, salary sacrifice)

Our values:

• Reimagine What's Possible- We believe innovation is human at its core. By staying open, fearless, and adaptive, we continuously push boundaries - while keeping people at the heart of everything we do.
• Obsess over Customers– Everything we do is designed to positively impact our customers.
• Help Others Thrive- Be they colleagues, communities or customers, we champion ways to help others thrive.
• Be Fearlessly Optimistic- We bring unwavering positivity to any challenge, as we know it will drive meaningful change.

Job Description

The Opportunity

ELMO’s HR and payroll platform runs on AWS RDS across MySQL, SQL Server and PostgreSQL, supported by a Snowflake data warehouse. We’re looking for a hands-on database expert who has grown into the modern data stack who can tune a slow query, resolve a production issue within SLA and build the pipelines that power our analytics and AI products.

Database performance, support and monitoring are the number-one priority in this role. You’ll own the health, stability and security of our production databases first, then apply that expertise across our wider data platform. You’ll also use AI agents and MCP tooling to investigate issues, analyse root causes and work faster and smarter.

This is an opportunity to combine strong DBA fundamentals with data engineering, cloud infrastructure and responsible AI in a role with direct impact on ELMO’s customers and products.

What you’ll be doing:

Database performance, support and monitoring

• Administer and support MySQL and SQL Server, with PostgreSQL, across AWS RDS environments from development through to production.
• Own the database ticket queue, triaging and resolving issues within agreed service-level agreements.
• Monitor database health, performance, capacity and availability, maintaining dashboards and alerts that support reliable production operations.
• Diagnose and resolve slow queries, locking and contention, indexing and execution-plan issues, configuration problems and capacity constraints.
• Plan and perform MySQL and SQL Server upgrades, including related tools and processes.
• Maintain strong security controls, including access management, data masking and row-level security, to protect sensitive HR and employee data.
• Use AI agents and MCP servers to accelerate investigation, root-cause analysis, query analysis and proactive monitoring.

Data engineering and platform delivery

• Build and maintain production-scale Snowflake pipelines and dbt models.
• Automate data loading and transformation using Python and SQL, orchestrated through Airflow or AWS Step Functions.
• Design and maintain reliable, observable data pipelines that support analytics, AI and downstream data products.
• Review AI-generated SQL, pipeline code and dbt models for correctness, performance, security and data integrity before merge.
• Contribute to data quality, schema evolution, contract testing and pipeline reliability practices.
• Support streaming and change-data-capture patterns, including Kafka, where required.
• Identify and deliver opportunities to optimise Snowflake and AWS costs.
• Own ISO 27001 evidence for the databases and pipelines within your area of responsibility.

What we’re looking for

• Strong DBA experience across AWS RDS, particularly MySQL and SQL Server. Experience with Aurora PostgreSQL is highly regarded.
• Proven experience with database performance tuning, query optimisation, indexing, upgrades, backup and recovery.
• A track record of supporting production databases through a ticket queue and resolving issues against agreed SLAs.
• Hands‑on experience with database monitoring and alerting for health, performance, availability, connections, storage and long-running queries.
• Practical experience with Snowflake and dbt in a production environment.
• Strong Python capability and advanced SQL skills.
• Experience with AWS data services and infrastructure as code, using Terraform, CloudFormation or equivalent.
• Daily, practical use of AI development tools such as Claude Code, GitHub Copilot or MCP‑connected agents.
• Awareness of ISO 27001 obligations when handling sensitive data.
• Clear communication skills, with the ability to work effectively with technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• Kafka, streaming and change-data-capture experience.
• Experience with data quality frameworks, schema evolution or contract testing.
• Experience working with HR technology, payroll, SaaS or other sensitive employee data.
• Practical experience applying AI to data engineering, database operations or developer productivity.

Why join this team?

You’ll work across the database and data platform landscape, balancing operational ownership with meaningful engineering delivery. Your work will help keep ELMO’s core platform reliable while enabling the analytics and AI capabilities that shape the future of work.

ELMO Software Pty Ltd is an equal opportunity employer, and we encourage applicants from diverse backgrounds to join our team. Handling sensitive employee data means strict adherence to our ISO 27001:2022 certified security policies, and we are committed to responsible, secure AI in line with ISO 42001.