Senior Database Administrator (PostgreSQL)

Hire Rightt - Executive Search & HR Advisory; Hyderabad; On-site; INR 1,800,000 - 2,800,000; Full time

Job summary

Hire Rightt is seeking a seasoned Database Reliability Engineer focused on PostgreSQL on AWS. The role emphasizes tuning, security, and high-availability across production databases.

You will own connection management, backup strategies, and performance optimization while collaborating with DevOps and development teams. Required experience includes AWS PostgreSQL (Aurora/RDS), SQL troubleshooting, and scripting for automation.

Qualifications

• Strong experience with PostgreSQL on AWS, esp. Aurora/RDS.
• Expertise in SQL optimization, EXPLAIN plans and troubleshooting.
• Knowledge of connection pooling technologies (RDS Proxy, PgBouncer).
• Proficient in scripting for automation (Python or Bash).
• Understanding of database security and least-privilege access control.

Responsibilities

• Own end-to-end database connection management and pooling setup.
• Tune PostgreSQL memory and planner parameters (work_mem, shared_buffers, etc).
• Review and validate indexing strategies and production-side indexes.
• Own backup/restore and PITR strategies with regular testing.
• Monitor vacuum/autovacuum, replication lag, locks and contention.
• Define and maintain HA/DR strategies and runbooks.
• Collaborate with devs/DevOps on schema design and migrations.

Skills

PostgreSQL on AWS

SQL optimization

SQL troubleshooting

Database connection pooling

Scripting (Python or Bash)

Security & access controls

Tools

RDS Proxy

PgBouncer

Terraform

AWS CloudWatch

Grafana

Prometheus

Job description

Employment Type: Full-time

Experience: 5+ Years

Key Responsibilities

Performance & Capacity Management

• Own end-to-end database connection management, including implementing and managing connection pooling solutions such as AWS RDS Proxy or PgBouncer.
• Tune PostgreSQL memory and query planner parameters, including work_mem, shared_buffers, and effective_cache_size.
• Review indexing strategies, identify redundant and unused indexes, and validate new indexes against production access patterns.

Reliability & Database Operations

• Own backup, restore, and point-in-time recovery (PITR) strategies, supported by regular recovery testing.
• Monitor and manage vacuum/autovacuum health, transaction ID wraparound risks, replication lag, locking, and contention.
• Define and maintain high-availability (HA) and disaster recovery (DR) strategies, including failover runbooks and RTO/RPO objectives.

Security & Compliance

• Own database access control, including role and privilege design, least-privilege enforcement, and credential lifecycle management.
• Implement secure credential practices, including password expiry and rotation.
• Collaborate with application development, DevOps, and cloud engineering teams on schema design, database migrations, and release safety.
• Establish database best practices and engineering standards.

Required Qualifications & Experience

• Strong practical experience with PostgreSQL on AWS, particularly Amazon Aurora and Amazon RDS.
• Proven expertise in SQL query optimization and troubleshooting, including EXPLAIN plans, pg_stat_statements, locks, database bloat, and slow queries.
• Strong understanding of database connection management and pooling solutions such as RDS Proxy and PgBouncer.
• Good understanding of database security, access controls, and least-privilege principles.
• Strong SQL skills and proficiency in at least one scripting language, such as Python or Bash, for automation.

Preferred

• Experience in financial services, trading, brokerage, fintech, or other latency- and data-correctness-sensitive environments.
• Experience with Infrastructure as Code (IaC), particularly Terraform.
• Familiarity with monitoring tools such as AWS CloudWatch, Grafana, and Prometheus.