Database Platform Engineer

Zopa Bank; Greater London; Hybrid; GBP 70,000 - 120,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Hybrid work model

London office 2-3 days/week

Work abroad up to 120 days/year

Job summary

Zopa Bank is seeking a seasoned Database Engineer to join the DBA team within our Platform Tribe. You’ll oversee mission-critical PostgreSQL and AWS database services, automate tasks, and help move our data stack from Microsoft SQL Server to PostgreSQL.

You’ll champion reliability, security and operability while partnering with platform engineers to improve automation, backups, monitoring and on-call practices across the engineering ecosystem.

Qualifications

• Experience in AWS-backed mission-critical database services.
• Strong PostgreSQL knowledge with backup/restore.
• Terraform and CI/CD automation skills.
• Experience with on-call support for production services.
• Database-engineering mindset focused on reliability and operability.
• Collaborative with platform engineers.

Responsibilities

• Support mission-critical PostgreSQL and AWS database services with strong operational discipline.
• Automate repeatable DBA work using infrastructure-as-code, CI/CD and deployment pipelines.
• Improve backup, restore, monitoring and replication practices.
• Partner with Cloud Infrastructure colleagues on AWS, Terraform and platform patterns.
• Help engineers self-serve database capabilities safely with clear guardrails.
• Contribute to the move away from Microsoft SQL Server towards PostgreSQL.
• Join the shared on-call rota and reduce avoidable alerting and toil.

Skills

AWS

PostgreSQL

Terraform

CI/CD

On-call support

Automation mindset

Tools

Redgate Monitor

Honeycomb

Job description

Hello there. We’re Zopa.
We started our journey back in 2005, building the first ever peer-to-peer lending company. Fast forward to 2020 and we launched Zopa Bank. A bank that listens to what our customers don’t like about finance and does the opposite. We’re redefining what it feels like to work in finance. Our vision for a new era of banking puts people front and centre — we’ve built a business that empowers everyone to aim high, every day, to move finance forward. Find out more about our fantastic offerings at Zopa.com !

Our Story

Hello there. We’re Zopa.
We started our journey back in 2005, building the first ever peer-to-peer lending company. Fast forward to 2020 and we launched Zopa Bank. A bank that listens to what our customers don’t like about finance and does the opposite. We’re redefining what it feels like to work in finance. Our vision for a new era of banking puts people front and centre — we’ve built a business that empowers everyone to aim high, every day, to move finance forward. Find out more about our fantastic offerings at Zopa.com !
We’re incredibly proud of our achievements and none of it would be possible without the amazing team here. It’s not just industry awards we’re winning, we’ve also been named in the top three UK’s Most Loved Workplaces.
If you embrace unconventional challenges, are unafraid to think differently and are driven to make an outsized impact, you’ll thrive here at Zopa, so join us, and make it count. Want to see us in action? Follow us on Instagram @zopalife

The Team

The DBA team sits within Zopa’s Platform Tribe, alongside Cloud Infrastructure and DevX. We support the databases and data stores behind critical customer and engineering services, while evolving how those services are delivered. This is not a traditional, server-only DBA role. We are automating database operations, strengthening cloud and infrastructure-as-code practices, and giving engineering teams clearer, safer ways to use database services. The team is also progressing a major transition from Microsoft SQL Server towards PostgreSQL, creating meaningful technical change for someone who enjoys both depth and improvement.

A Day In The Life

• Support mission-critical PostgreSQL and AWS database services with strong operational discipline.
• Automate repeatable DBA work using infrastructure-as-code, CI/CD and deployment pipelines.
• Improve backup, restore, monitoring and replication practices.
• Partner with Cloud Infrastructure colleagues on AWS, Terraform and platform patterns.
• Help engineers self-serve database capabilities safely and with clear guardrails.
• Contribute to the move away from Microsoft SQL Server towards PostgreSQL.
• Join the shared on-call rota and continually reduce avoidable alerting and toil.

About You

• Practical AWS experience supporting mission-critical database services.
• Strong PostgreSQL knowledge and experience with backup and restore.
• Terraform and CI/CD experience, with a focus on automation.
• Experience participating in on-call support for production services.
• A database-engineering mindset combined with practical platform automation.
• Ability to reason about reliability, resilience, security and operability.
• Collaborative working style and confidence partnering with platform engineers.

Added Bonus

• AWS certification.
• Experience supporting MySQL or SQL Server instances.
• Database automation and PostgreSQL replication experience.
• Monitoring experience with Redgate Monitor, Honeycomb or comparable tools.
• Pragmatic use of AI in day-to-day engineering work.

At Zopa we value flexible ways of working.

We value face-to-face collaboration and a good work-life balance. This hybrid role requires you to come to our London office 2-3 days a week. You'll also have the option of working from abroad for up to 120 days a year!* But no matter where you are, we’ll make sure you’ve got everything you need to thrive, both in your work and home life, from day one.

• Subject to having the right to work in the country of choice

Diversity Statement

Zopa is proud to offer a workplace free from discrimination. Diversity of experience, perspectives, and backgrounds leads to better products for our customers and a unique company culture for our people. We are made up of nearly 50 nationalities, have a DE&I forum made up of Zopians wanting to make a difference and we are proud of our culture where everyone can bring their full self to work. Our approach to DE&I is reflected in our hiring process so please let us know if you require any reasonable adjustments.

Our approach to AI in interviews

At Zopa, AI isn't something we're testing out — it's part of how we work every day. As a proud partner of Jobs 2030 , we're committed to building AI fluency across our workforce, and we expect Zopians to use AI as part of how they do their jobs. Because of that, we want to be transparent about how we think about AI use during our hiring process.

Behavioural and competency-based interviews

Please don't use AI . These conversations are designed to understand you — your experiences, your judgment, and how you've approached real situations. An AI-generated answer can't tell us that. What it can do is get in the way of us finding out whether we're the right fit for each other.

Technical interviews

It depends on the role. Some technical stages actively welcome AI use, others don't. Your Talent Partner will let you know what's expected at each stage. Where AI is part of the assessment, we'll be interested not just in the outcome, but in how you used it – the tools you chose, your reasoning, and the decisions you made along the way.