Database Reliability Engineer

Starling Bank Limited; Southampton; On-site; GBP 50,000 - 75,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

25 days holiday plus public holidays

Paid volunteering time

Private medical insurance

Annual leave increases with service

Life insurance

Partner discounts

Family-friendly policies

Salary sacrifice pension scheme

Perkbox membership

Job summary

A UK bank is seeking skilled data professionals to join its dynamic team in Southampton. The role emphasizes expertise in PostgreSQL and Kubernetes amidst a fast-moving environment. Responsibilities include modernizing data fleets, architecting portability, and ensuring business continuity through effective data management strategies. Candidates should have a security mindset and a strong knowledge in distributed systems. The position offers hybrid working and competitive benefits including extensive holiday and private medical insurance.

Qualifications

• Expertise in PostgreSQL and Kubernetes for stateful workloads management.
• Ability to provision infrastructure through code instead of manually.
• Strong understanding of multi-tenant and multi-cloud systems.

Responsibilities

• Modernize and scale the RDS fleet while ensuring reliability.
• Architect cross-cloud portability for database layer.
• Evolve observability and monitoring for performance.
• Support replication and mobility for data.
• Fortify business continuity with disaster recovery designs.

Skills

PostgreSQL

Kubernetes

Systems thinking

Distributed Systems

Security mindset

Java

Tools

Terraform

Prometheus

Grafana

OpenTelemetry

Humio

Job description

Starling is a fully licensed UK bank with the culture and spirit of a fast‑moving, disruptive tech company. With more than 3,000 people across London, Southampton, Cardiff and Manchester, we empower teams to deliver banking services at the touch of a phone.

Our technologists are at the very heart of Starling. We thrive in a fast‑paced environment that is all about building new solutions, delivering technology that keeps us on the cutting edge of fintech, and collaborating across the business.

The way to thrive at Starling is to be a self‑driven individual who takes full ownership of everything—from building and designing to sharing knowledge and ensuring efficient processes that deliver the best possible results for our customers.

Our Data teams are aligned to divisions covering Banking Services & Products, Customer Identity & Financial Crime, and Data & ML Engineering. We are excited about delivering meaningful insights to both the business and our customers.

We are looking for talented data professionals at all levels to join the team. We value people who care about customers, the code they write, and the contribution they make to Starling. People with a broad ability to apply themselves to a multitude of problems and challenges, who can work across teams, do great things here at Starling, and continue changing banking for good.

Hybrid Working

We have a hybrid approach to working. Our preference is that you’re located within commuting distance of one of our offices. In Technology, you’re expected to attend the office a minimum of one day per week.

Our Data Environment

Our Data teams cover Banking Services & Products, Customer Identity & Financial Crime, and Data & ML Engineering. We deliver impactful insights to the business and our customers.

Responsibilities

• Modernize and Scale the RDS Fleet: ensure reliability, automate upgrades, and tune performance across hundreds of instances.
• Architect Cross‑Cloud Portability: use CNPG and cloud‑native patterns to keep our database layer provider‑agnostic.
• Evolve Observability & Monitoring: build proactive monitoring and alerting to detect regressions before they affect customers.
• Support Replication & Mobility: enable data streaming and zero‑downtime migration strategies for consistency and availability.
• Fortify Business Continuity (BCP): design disaster recovery strategies and automation for resilient data durability and rapid recovery.

Qualifications

• PostgreSQL & Kubernetes expert with experience using CNPG for stateful workloads on Kubernetes.
• Systems thinker: use code (Terraform, custom APIs) to provision infrastructure, avoiding manual implementations.
• Distributed Systems enthusiast: enjoy the challenge of multi‑tenant, multi‑region, multi‑cloud scenarios with rigorous data integrity.
• Security & Observability mindset: build deep observability (Prometheus/Grafana/OpenTelemetry/Humio) and guardrails for secure operation.
• Engineering via code: deliver backend services in Java with clean relational modeling and performant DDL.

Interview Process

• Stage 1 – 30 min chat with a team member.
• Stage 2 – Take‑home challenge.
• Stage 3 – 60 min technical interview with two team members.
• Stage 4 – 45 min final with two data executives.

Benefits

• 25 days holiday (plus public holidays and a birthday day).
• Annual leave increases with length of service; buy or sell up to five extra days.
• 16 hours paid volunteering time per year.
• Salary sacrifice and company‑enhanced pension scheme.
• Life insurance at 4× salary & group income protection.
• Private medical insurance with VitalityHealth, including mental health support and cancer care.
• Partner discounts (Waitrose, Mr & Mrs Smith, Peloton).
• Generous family‑friendly policies.
• Perkbox membership for retail discounts, wellness platform, and weekly perks.
• Access to initiatives like Cycle to Work, salary‑sacrifice gym partnerships, and EV leasing.

Starling Bank is an equal‑opportunity employer. We consider applicants without regard to race, religion, national origin, age, sex, gender, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, marital status, medical condition, ancestry, physical or mental disability, military or veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by applicable law.