Senior Database Engineer

Wise; City Of London; Hybrid; GBP 88,000 - 111,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Wise Benefits

Hybrid work model

RSUs

Job summary

Wise London is seeking a Senior Platform Engineer (IC3) to join our Database Platform team. You'll build and operate a global platform that's scalable, reliable, and secure—developing the internal database platform, automation, and tooling powering hundreds of databases across environments.

You'll lead end-to-end initiatives, define automation strategy, and embed security controls into platform components. Collaborating with SREs, DBAs, and product teams, you’ll drive reliability and developer

Qualifications

• Significant Platform Engineering experience with senior ownership of production systems at scale.
• Experience with cloud infrastructure (AWS or GCP).
• Strong Python development skills and secure coding practices.
• Proficiency with Cloud APIs and DevOps tooling.
• Clear communicator who collaborates across teams.

Responsibilities

• Design, build, and evolve our internal cloud-based database platform.
• Lead initiatives end-to-end with a focus on predictable delivery.
• Define long-term automation strategy including migrations, upgrades and recovery patterns.
• Embed security and compliance controls (encryption, auth, RBAC, network controls).
• Be accountable for availability, reliability, and security of owned systems.
• Collaborate with product teams, SREs and DBAs to apply platform guardrails.
• Mentor engineers, support onboarding, and reduce single points of failure.
• Participate in on-call rotations and incident post-mortems.

Skills

Platform engineering

Cloud infrastructure

Python development

DevOps tooling

Security & RBAC

Incident response

Leadership

Distributed databases

Tools

AWS

GCP

Terraform

Ansible

CI/CD

Teleport

Job description

Company Description

Wise is a global technology company, building the best way to move and manage the world's money.

Min fees. Max ease. Full speed.

Whether people and businesses are sending money to another country, spending abroad, or making and receiving international payments, Wise is on a mission to make their lives easier and save them money.

As part of our team, you will be helping us create an entirely new network for the world's money.

For everyone, everywhere.

More about our mission and what we offer.

Job Description

About the role

We're looking for a Senior Platform Engineer (IC3 level) to join our Database Platform team. You'll help build and operate a global platform that's scalable, reliable, and secure - developing the internal database platform, automation, and tooling that powers hundreds of databases across multiple environments. You'll work on high-scale systems used by hundreds of engineers, shaping how we run databases globally.

How we work:

We believe in automation, programmatic implementation, and reusable design. You'll think holistically about the ecosystem, while also delivering real solutions - collaborating across the Platform tribe to make our systems more resilient and developer-friendly. At this, you help set and evolve technical standards, design patterns, and best practices for the platform.

As we scale, we need engineers who can simplify complex infrastructure, build guardrails, and deliver platforms that help product teams move fast - without compromising reliability or security. You proactively identify technical debt and plan remediation work to keep risk within appetite.

You'll work closely with other Platform and Data teams to ensure best practices are followed and the right abstractions are in place. You provide strong technical input into product and platform roadmaps, explaining why work is prioritised and what impact it delivers.

You'll be part of a team that empowers hundreds of developers to build reliable services faster, with modern tooling and infrastructure at scale. The systems you design will directly impact the availability, performance, and safety of our customers' data worldwide. You'll join a collaborative team that values technical excellence, learning, and continuous improvement.

At this, you are a recognised technical leader, shaping both the platform's direction and the engineers around you

What will you be working on?

• Design, build, and evolve our internal cloud-based database platform.
• Lead these initiatives end-to-end, optimising for predictable delivery and measurable outcomes.
• Define the long-term automation strategy, including migrations, upgrades, and failure recovery patterns.
• Help embed security and compliance controls (encryption, auth, RBAC, network controls) into Yugabyte platform components.
• Be accountable for the availability, reliability, and security of the systems you own.
• Collaborate with product teams, SREs and DBAs to apply platform guardrails for services adopting database technologies.
• Act as the escalation point for your area, leading minor and major incident resolution and post-incident reviews.
• Mentor and coach other engineers, support onboarding, and actively reduce single points of failure.
• Participate in on-call rotations and provide senior escalation support when required.
• Represent the team in cross-tribe or cross-company engineering efforts and guilds.
• Participate in interviewing and hiring activities, following best practices and helping maintain a high engineering bar.

What do you need?

Essential

• Significant Platform Engineering experience, with demonstrated senior ownership of production platform systems at scale.
• Experience with cloud infrastructure (AWS or GCP).
• Strong Python development skills (or similar).
• Solid understanding of software engineering principles - writing secure, testable, maintainable code.
• Proficiency with Cloud APIs and DevOps tooling (Terraform, Ansible, CI/CD, Teleport).
• Clear communicator who collaborates well across teams.

• Ability to clearly articulate technical trade-offs, business impact, and customer value.
• Experience leading or significantly contributing to incident response and post-incident improvement.

Highly sought

• Practical experience with distributed databases at scale (YugabyteDB preferred, or CockroachDB/TiDB/Cloud Spanner).

• Deep operational expertise with distributed SQL systems in production.

• Experience or strong interest in implementing migration patterns (CDC/logical replication, verification and rollback) and automation for provisioning, backups and upgrades.

• Demonstrated leadership of migration strategy and execution.

• Experience building Database-as-a-Service platforms or internal developer tooling.

• Experience influencing technical or product roadmaps.

Interested? Find out more:

• How we work - a practical guide
• DEI @ Wise
• Wise Tech Stack (2025 update)
• See what it's like to work at Wise London!
• Our Engineering career map
• Wise Engineering - https://medium.com/wise-engineering

What do we offer:

• Starting salary: £87,500 - £111,000 + RSUs
• Wise Benefits

#LI-AB3 #LI-Hybrid

Additional Information

For everyone, everywhere. We're people building money without borders - without judgement or prejudice, too. We believe teams are strongest when they are diverse, equitable and inclusive.

We're proud to have a truly international team, and we celebrate our differences.

Inclusive teams help us live our values and make sure every Wiser feels respected, empowered to contribute towards our mission and able to progress in their careers.

If you want to find out more about what it's like to work at Wise visit Wise.Jobs.

Keep up to date with life at Wise by following us on LinkedIn and Instagram.