Senior PostgreSQL DBA (AWS / RDS) Platform · Eindhoven HQ ·

Axa Venture Partners; Eindhoven; Hybrid; EUR 90,000 - 120,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Learning budget €2,000

Hybrid office 1 day/week in Eindhoven

Paid vacations

Home office budget

Gym access

Lunch & fruit

Pension scheme

Employee discount

Dog-friendly office

Job summary

Sendcloud, based in Eindhoven, is hiring a Senior PostgreSQL DBA to own our PostgreSQL estate end-to-end. You’ll drive performance, schema design, and cost‑effective backup strategies to support 30,000+ retailers.

You will mentor engineers, collaborate with Platform and Product teams, and shape long‑term PostgreSQL strategy. This role includes a hybrid office model with one day per week in the Eindhoven office.

Qualifications

• 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.

Responsibilities

• 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

Skills

PostgreSQL

AWS

SQL performance

DevOps

ORMS

Tools

AWS RDS

Aurora

Terraform

CI/CD

Git

Python

Job description

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.
• Own our backup and disaster-recovery strategy end to end, including restore testing and clear RTO/RPO targets.
• 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 allowanceFuture Benefits — Pension scheme · Employee discount programs
• Vibe Benefits — Dog-friendly office · After-hours drinks at the Sendcloud Bar