Senior PostgreSQL DBA (AWS / RDS)

SendCloud; Eindhoven; Hybrid; EUR 76,000 - 93,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Learning budget €2,000

Home office budget €500

Pension scheme

Dog-friendly office

Free lunch

Job summary

Sendcloud seeks a Senior PostgreSQL DBA to own our PostgreSQL estate on AWS RDS and Aurora at scale. You will set performance standards, guide schema design, backups, and disaster recovery to support 30k+ retailers.

You’ll partner with Platform and Product Eng to improve data reliability, observability, and cost-efficiency while shaping the long-term PostgreSQL strategy across engineering teams.

Qualifications

• 5+ years in database engineering with PostgreSQL as primary focus.
• 3+ years operating PostgreSQL on AWS (RDS/Aurora) including backups and monitoring.
• Experience in cloud-native or SaaS environments with microservices architecture.
• Strong PostgreSQL internals knowledge and performance bottleneck solving.
• Familiarity with infrastructure-as-code and reading Python ORM code.

Responsibilities

• Operate and improve PostgreSQL clusters on AWS RDS/Aurora; tune performance and fix bottlenecks.
• Analyse and optimise complex queries, indexes, and schemas as traffic grows.
• Own backup and disaster-recovery strategy with regular restore testing and clear RTO/RPO targets.
• Lead major PostgreSQL upgrades and zero-downtime migrations.
• Design scalable schemas for a microservices setup with partitioning and indexing decisions.
• Incorporate security in schema design with row-level security and least-privilege access.
• Develop DB hygiene playbooks and train engineers across teams.
• Collaborate with Platform/Product Eng to ensure reliability and scalability.

Skills

PostgreSQL

AWS RDS/Aurora

Query optimization

Database design

Backup & DR

Performance tuning

IaC (Terraform)

SQLAlchemy ORM

Education

5+ years in database engineering

AWS PostgreSQL production experience

Tools

Terraform

Git & CI/CD

RDS Proxy

Job description

Join Sendcloud as Senior PostgreSQL DBA — own AWS RDS and Aurora at scale, sharpen performance, strengthen resilience, and set database standards across engineering.

Eindhoven (1 day in office) | 40hrs per week

This is what you tell people at parties

We didn't become Europe's leading e-commerce shipping platform by playing it safe. Sendcloud powers 30,000+ online retailers, marketplaces, and fulfillment companies. Helping them ship smarter, grow faster, and actually get shit done for their customers. Boring logistics? Not here. We're building the platform that solves shipping, at scale, globally!

As we scale past 30,000+ retailers, the complexity at our data layer is growing just as fast — query bottlenecks, oversized instances, and PostgreSQL knowledge gaps across teams. You'd join our Platform Engineering domain to own that complexity end to end, from query performance and schema design to backup strategy and disaster recovery. It's a role with real technical authority: the standards you set for PostgreSQL will shape how every engineering team at Sendcloud builds on data for years to come.

The Role

• As the Senior PostgreSQL DBA, own our PostgreSQL estate technically and operationally, from AWS RDS and Aurora clusters to the schemas running on top of them.
• Set the technical bar for query performance, indexing, and schema design across a microservices environment serving 30,000+ retailers.
• Act as the trusted PostgreSQL advisor for backend and platform engineers, raising database hygiene across every feature team.
• Shape our long-term PostgreSQL strategy — tooling, observability, and cost-efficiency — as we continue to scale.

What you'll do

• Operate and improve PostgreSQL clusters running on AWS RDS and Aurora, tuning performance and resolving bottlenecks before they become incidents.
• Analyse and optimise complex queries, indexes, and schemas to keep performance predictable as traffic scales.
• Own backup and disaster-recovery strategy, including regular restore testing and clear RTO/RPO targets.
• Lead PostgreSQL major-version upgrades and zero-downtime schema migrations on systems that can't afford downtime.
• Design scalable PostgreSQL schemas for a microservices environment, guiding decisions on partitioning, denormalisation, replication, and indexing.
• Build security into schema design, including row-level security policies and least-privilege access for sensitive tables.
• Drive PostgreSQL enablement across engineering — training, playbooks, and 'DB Hygiene 101' guidelines that raise the bar for every team.
• Work with our Platform and Product Engineering teams to ensure data reliability, performance, and scalability
• Contribute to our long-term PostgreSQL strategy, including tooling, observability, and cost-efficiency

What you bring to the table

Personally

• You take ownership without waiting to be asked — you spot reliability and performance risks before they become incidents and drive the fix yourself.
• You'd rather explain a database trade-off clearly to a non-DBA than hide behind jargon, and you enjoy being the person engineers turn to with tricky PostgreSQL questions.
• You're comfortable influencing technical decisions across teams without formal authority, backed up by documentation people actually read.

Professionally

• 5+ years of experience in database engineering or administration with PostgreSQL as your primary focus, including 4+ years hands‑on in high‑availability production environments.
• 3+ years operating PostgreSQL on AWS (RDS or Aurora), covering backup strategies, replication, monitoring, and performance tuning.
• 3+ years working in cloud-native or SaaS environments, ideally within a microservices‑based architecture.
• Strong command of PostgreSQL internals — planner, vacuuming, WAL, and query plans — with a proven track record of solving performance bottlenecks at scale.
• Comfortable with infrastructure-as-code and DevOps practices (Git, Terraform, CI/CD pipelines), and confident reading Python application code using ORMs such as SQLAlchemy or Django ORM.
• Nice to have: previous experience with connection pooling (e.g. RDS Proxy) in high-concurrency environments, or contributions to open‑source PostgreSQL tooling.

Our Values

• No bullshit: Big egos suck. Be open, honest and transparent. Share your mistakes openly and learn from them. Don't just talk about problems, solve them.
• Grow & win: Be highly curious, adaptable & proactive. Embrace discomfort and change. Keep an open mindset and learn from others. You invest in our growth, so we invest in yours.
• Have fun: Work hard, laugh harder. Not everything has to be serious. Be yourself, especially if you're the good kind of crazy. Sendcloud is an adventure, not a corporate maze, enjoy the ride.

Benefits

Brain Benefits —

• €2,000 learning budget
• Courses, certifications & conferences
• Growth in an international team

Time Benefits —

• 28 days of paid vacations per year
• Extra day off on your birthday
• Swap public holidays for meaningful ones

Sabbatical Benefits —

• 4 weeks fully paid every 3 years

Home Benefits —

• Flexible hybrid model (3+ days/week in office)
• €500 home office budget

Body Benefits —

• Company gym
• Free lunch every Monday
• Fresh fruit
• Barista coffee

Travel Benefits —

• Monthly commuting allowance

Future Benefits —

• Pension scheme
• Employee discount programs

Vibe Benefits —

• Dog-friendly office
• After-hours drinks at the Sendcloud Bar

• Yearly salary: €84,300

We only accept applications from people who are already living in the Netherlands. Your application will not be reviewed and auto rejected if you do not have a registered address in the Netherlands.