Database Performance Engineer

Veriipro; New York (NY); On-site; USD 140,000 - 190,000; Full time

Job summary

Veriipro in New York seeks an experienced Database Performance Engineer to optimize and scale high‑volume transactional systems using MariaDB/MySQL. You will design and execute distributed load tests, tune queries, indexes, and configurations, and implement robust observability.

You will lead performance initiatives, collaborate with Software, QA, Infra, and Performance Engineering teams, and help define baselines and scalability strategies in a cloud/Kubernetes environment.

Qualifications

• 7+ years in database administration with performance engineering focus.
• Extensive MariaDB and MySQL administration and tuning experience.
• Proven experience with performance and load testing at scale.
• Strong knowledge of load-testing tools (k6/Locust/Gatling).

Responsibilities

• Lead performance, load, stress, and scalability tests for high-volume platforms.
• Design and analyze performance tests using k6, Locust, Gatling, or similar.
• Tune SQL, indexes, execution plans, schemas, and configs.
• Identify slow queries, lock contention, replication lag, and saturation.
• Develop observability dashboards with Grafana, Prometheus, Datadog, OpenTelemetry.
• Collaborate across software, QA, infra, and performance teams.

Skills

MariaDB

MySQL

Performance tuning

SQL optimization

Load testing

Distributed systems

Linux

Scripting

Tools

k6

Locust

Gatling

Grafana

Prometheus

Datadog

OpenTelemetry

Kubernetes

MySQL

MariaDB

Linux

Job description

We are seeking a highly experienced Database Performance Engineer / DBA specializing in Performance and Load Testing to optimize, benchmark, and scale mission‑critical, high‑volume transactional database systems. The ideal candidate will have deep expertise in MariaDB and MySQL performance tuning, workload analysis, distributed load testing, database observability, and scalability engineering.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead database performance, load, stress, endurance, and scalability testing for high‑volume transactional platforms.
• Design, execute, and analyze performance tests using tools such as k6, Locust, Gatling, or equivalent frameworks.
• Administer, troubleshoot, and optimize MariaDB and MySQL database environments.
• Analyze and tune SQL queries, indexes, execution plans, schemas, and database configurations.
• Identify and resolve slow queries, lock contention, deadlocks, connection saturation, and replication lag.
• Monitor database performance metrics, including CPU, memory, IOPS, query latency, transaction throughput, and buffer pool efficiency.
• Support distributed load generation and production‑scale workload simulations.
• Develop database scalability strategies involving read replicas, partitioning, sharding, schema separation, and resource scaling.
• Implement and maintain observability dashboards, monitoring, and alerting using Grafana, Prometheus, Datadog, and OpenTelemetry.
• Perform root cause analysis of database and application performance issues in collaboration with Software, QA, Infrastructure, and Performance Engineering teams.
• Establish performance baselines, capacity plans, benchmarks, and database reliability standards.
• Prepare detailed performance reports and recommend remediation strategies to improve system efficiency and resilience.
• Support cloud‑native and Kubernetes‑based database environments.
• Provide technical leadership, mentor team members, and promote database performance engineering best practices.

Mandatory Technical Skills

• 7+ years of experience in database administration, with a strong focus on performance engineering.
• Extensive hands‑on experience with MariaDB and MySQL administration and performance tuning.
• Proven experience in database‑focused performance and load testing.
• Strong knowledge of k6, Locust, Gatling, or comparable load‑testing tools.
• Experience with distributed load generation and large‑scale workload simulation.
• Expertise in SQL optimization, indexing, execution plan analysis, schema tuning, and query performance.
• Strong understanding of lock contention, deadlocks, replication optimization, and replication‑lag analysis.
• Experience monitoring database saturation, connection pools, IOPS, CPU, memory, and transaction throughput.
• Knowledge of database scalability strategies, including read replicas, partitioning, sharding, and horizontal and vertical scaling.
• Hands‑on experience with observability platforms such as Grafana, Prometheus, Datadog, and OpenTelemetry.
• Strong Linux administration and scripting/automation skills.
• Experience working with cloud‑native infrastructure and Kubernetes‑based environments.