Remote Principal DBA: PostgreSQL Reliability Lead

DutchTech; Amsterdam; Hybrid; EUR 120,000 - 180,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Stock options

Work & Swim Program

Hybrid/Remote across Europe

Job summary

Finom, a European fintech startup headquartered in Amsterdam, is seeking a Principal Database Administrator to own the reliability of our banking database infrastructure. You will balance architectural strategy with hands-on implementation, ensuring data integrity and availability in a fast-paced environment.

You will lead the database roadmap, optimize performance, design scalable infrastructure, and establish observability.

Qualifications

• 5+ years as PostgreSQL DBA in high-load production environments (fintech or mission-critical systems).
• Deep PostgreSQL expertise: index design (B-tree, GIN, GiST, BRIN), partitioning, and vacuum tuning.
• HA/DR mastery: streaming replication, clustering, and automated backup validation.
• Cloud fluency: hands-on with cloud-managed PostgreSQL (GCP) and Linux systems administration.
• Automation mindset: Terraform, Ansible, and CI/CD (GitLab, ArgoCD).
• Strong SQL skills: complex queries, stored procedures, and functions.
• Observability stack: experience with monitoring/alerting for databases (Prometheus/Grafana).
• Fluent English.

Responsibilities

• Own database reliability: drive high availability and disaster recovery strategies with RPO/RTO targets for core banking systems.
• Architect for scale: define and execute scalability roadmap including partitioning, sharding, and capacity forecasting.
• Optimize performance: deep-dive query optimization and proactive bottleneck remediation.
• Design infrastructure: build scalable inference and connection pooling (PgBouncer) and backup/restore automations.
• Establish observability: design monitoring (Prometheus, Grafana, VictoriaMetrics) and SLIs/SLOs.
• Champion security: implement banking-grade security and credential management.
• Partner with engineering: ensure DB schema changes support high-load environments.
• Lead by example: mentor, define standards, and hands-on implementation.

Skills

PostgreSQL internals

High availability

Query optimization

PgBouncer

Observability stack

Security practices

Cloud (GCP)

IaC & CI/CD

SQL proficiency

Communication

Tools

PostgreSQL

GCP

Kubernetes

Terraform

Ansible

GitLab

ArgoCD

PgBouncer

Prometheus

Grafana

Job description

Finom, a European fintech startup headquartered in Amsterdam, is seeking a Principal Database Administrator to own the reliability of our banking database infrastructure. You will balance architectural strategy with hands-on implementation, ensuring data integrity and availability in a fast-paced environment.

You will lead the database roadmap, optimize performance, design scalable infrastructure, and establish observability.