Database Developer Role

Peregrine Advisors; Washington; On-site; USD 90,000 - 130,000; Full time

Job summary

OPEN Data Jobs seeks a Database Developer to design, optimize, and secure the database-resident layer that powers applications and analytics.

You will read execution plans, craft indexes, implement migrations, and ensure data integrity while collaborating with engineers, analysts, and operators across projects.

Qualifications

• Strong SQL and relational database experience with complex queries and set operations.
• Ability to read and translate execution plans into efficient changes.
• Experience with schema migrations, constraints, and data integrity.
• Understanding permissions, secure coding, and safe change practices.

Responsibilities

• Read execution plans and improve queries, indexes, and access patterns.
• Design and evolve database schemas and objects close to data.
• Implement migrations, tests, and rollback plans; ensure security considerations.

Skills

SQL proficiency

Query tuning

Execution plan analysis

Schema design

Data integrity & security

Tools

PostgreSQL

Microsoft SQL Server

Oracle Database

Cloud data warehouse

Job description

The work

Database Developers build the database-resident layer that makes application and analytical data correct, usable, and efficient. They write SQL, create views, functions, and procedures, evolve schemas, and design database objects that express rules close to the data.

The work is grounded in query behavior and transactional correctness. You read execution plans, select or revise indexes, remove avoidable work from a query, manage migrations, validate constraints, and test changes against realistic data volumes. You also consider permissions and the security consequences of views, functions, and other database objects.

Database Developers partner with software engineers, data engineers, data architects, analysts, and database administrators. The role is distinct from broad data-pipeline engineering and from operating the database service: its center of gravity is the code, structures, and access patterns inside the database.

What you\'ll build

• SQL queries, views, materialized views, functions, procedures, and database packages.


• Schema migrations, tables, constraints, indexes, partitions, and reference data.


• Tested data-access layers for applications, reports, integrations, and analytical workloads.


• Query-performance improvements based on execution plans, workload evidence, and data distribution.


• Version-controlled database changes, automated tests, deployment checks, and rollback plans.

Who you are

You enjoy making data behavior explicit. You can move from a business rule to a reliable database implementation, reason about edge cases and concurrency, and tell the difference between a query that merely runs and one that will remain safe and understandable.

You treat production data carefully. You review plans and evidence before tuning, test migrations before release, document assumptions, and collaborate across application and operations teams when a change crosses ownership boundaries.

What you\'ll bring

• Strong SQL and relational database experience, including joins, set operations, transactions, constraints, and window functions.


• Hands-on work with views, functions, procedures, schema migrations, and database version control.


• Ability to interpret execution plans and improve queries, indexes, and data-access patterns.


• Understanding of permissions, secure database coding, transactional integrity, and safe change practices.


• Experience testing database changes and working with application, data, architecture, and operations teams.

About OPEN Data Jobs

OPEN Data Jobs connects AI, data, and software professionals with critical roles, primarily in the federal sector. Registering with ODJ can put your profile in view for multiple positions across several clients.

What openings may require

An opening may center on PostgreSQL, Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle Database, a cloud warehouse, or another specific platform. It may require procedural SQL, partitioning, replication-aware development, change-data-capture integration, reporting workloads, or a particular migration and deployment toolchain.

Some AI-enabled applications use semi-structured data, vector-capable indexes, retrieval metadata, or feedback records in a database. Those needs may appear in an opening, but they do not redefine the role: the Database Developer remains accountable for database-resident logic, data integrity, query behavior, and safe schema change.

Compensation, benefits, work location, and employment terms are set for each specific opening and will be stated with that opening