Manager, Database Engineering

Q2; Austin (TX); Hybrid; USD 140,000 - 195,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Hybrid Work Opportunities

Flexible Time Off

Career Development & Mentoring

Health & Wellness Benefits

Parental Leave

Volunteer Programs

Employee Recognition Programs

Job summary

Q2 is seeking a senior DB/Platform leader to own the production estate across SQL Server, PostgreSQL, Aurora, Snowflake, and MongoDB on AWS EC2. You will guide a skilled team, drive modernization, and build self-service tooling to scale with cost awareness.

The role emphasizes proactive risk mgmt, end-to-end program ownership, and strong leadership in a fast-paced, financial services–adjacent environment. This is a hybrid role with opportunities for growth.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, or a related field.
• Minimum 6 years of related experience; or 4+ years with advanced degree.
• 1–2 years managing and developing employees.
• Deep SQL Server expertise at scale: Always On, multi-region HA/DR, licensing economics.
• Ability to lead engineers across multiple DB technologies: relational, analytical, and non-relational stores.
• Strong AWS depth managing a DB estate on EC2; Azure knowledge is useful.
• Experience defining and driving end-to-end programs including migrations or modernization.
• Robust AI ability to build observability and tooling quickly.
• Strong judgment under pressure and ownership bias.
• Familiarity with security, compliance, and operational best practices.

Responsibilities

• Own production: availability, performance, recoverability across the multi-engine estate.
• Set technical direction and mentor engineers while communicating plans to senior stakeholders.
• Champion build-our-own tooling and self-service vs. vendor solutions.
• Push AI hands-on to build observability into the stack.
• Grow the team and hold it accountable to value delivered.
• Own economics: licensing, true-ups, storage sizing, cost-to-serve, and defend numbers.
• Set standards for availability-group, DR design, and data security per governance.
• Lead modernization end-to-end: migrations, consolidation, DR maturation.
• Establish engineering rhythms, KPIs, and collaborate across data platform, architecture, product to deliver data products.

Skills

SQL Server

AWS

Team leadership

Observability tooling

Multi-DB knowledge

Migration planning

Education

Bachelor’s degree in CS

Tools

Snowflake

MongoDB

PostgreSQL

Aurora

Pinecone

EC2

Azure

Job description

As passionate about our people as we are about our mission.

Why Join Q2?

Q2 is a leading provider of digital banking and lending solutions to banks, credit unions, alternative finance companies, and fintechs in the U.S. and internationally. Our mission is simple: build strong and diverse communities through innovative financial technology—and we do that by empowering our people to help create success for our customers.

What Makes Q2 Special?

Being as passionate about our people as we are about our mission. We celebrate our employees in many ways through our year-round Q2 ChangeMakers awards program and global moments of recognition and connection. We invest in the growth and development of our team members through ongoing learning opportunities, internal mobility, and meaningful leadership relationships. We also know that nothing builds trust and collaboration like having fun and giving back together. From company-wide volunteer days to events like our Q2 Homecoming Week—featuring learning, community service, and culture-building experiences—we create opportunities to connect, grow, and make an impact.

Summary

We run a large SQL Server estate at serious scale, mostly on EC2, alongside a fast-growing set of PostgreSQL, Aurora, Snowflake, MongoDB, and Pinecone workloads supporting analytical and AI use cases. We are primarily an AWS shop with a small Azure footprint, and this team keeps that estate fast, available, recoverable, and cost-efficient for the financial institutions that depend on it.
We are looking for a manager who owns production and drives our engineers to be the best versions of themselves. Not someone who reacts to what breaks, but someone who anticipates risk, guides a highly skilled team to the best solution, and drives programs end to end without being told to. Patching and maintenance are an afterthought for us; the successful candidate is already thinking about the problems the team hasn’t realized it has yet.
A defining trait of this team is that we build our own solutions rather than outsource: we build custom tooling so we can scale with technology instead of people, while knowing the line where a vendor solves it more economically. We serve two sets of customers who both matter deeply. Externally, a bad day for us can mean a bank that anchors a local community is unavailable to the people who depend on it. Internally, our stakeholders are other Q2’ers, and the goal is to multiply their impact through self-service tooling to the point where they don’t need a DBA at all.

Responsibilities

• Own production: accountable for availability, performance, and recoverability across the multi-engine estate. Own the coverage model and act as the incident-command backstop so the team, not any one person, carries a bad day
• Set technical direction and own the outcome. Guide highly skilled engineers to the best solution, mentoring rather than driving where that serves better, and tell senior stakeholders where we are going and why
• Champion build-our-own tooling and self-service, with the judgment to know where a vendor is the more economical answer
• Push AI hands-on to build observability into the stack and extend the tooling we have already built
• Grow the team and hold it accountable to the value it delivers: coach, set clear expectations, and run honest performance conversations
• Own the economics: enterprise licensing and annual true-up, storage right-sizing, and cost-to-serve. Track spend and defend the numbers to finance and leadership
• Set the standards for availability-group and DR design, build and automation practices, and data security and access control aligned with governance policy
• Lead modernization end to end: version migrations, cross-engine consolidation, and DR maturation, driven to measurable milestones
• Establish engineering rhythms, KPIs, and accountability, and partner across data platform, architecture, and product to deliver curated data products

Experience and Knowledge

• Typically requires a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, or a related field and a minimum of 6 years of related experience; or an advanced degree with 4+ years of experience
• Typically requires 1-2 years managing and developing employees
• Deep SQL Server expertise at scale: Always On availability groups, multi-region high availability and DR, performance troubleshooting, and enterprise licensing economics
• Ability to lead engineers across multiple database technologies: relational (SQL Server, PostgreSQL, Aurora), analytical (Snowflake), and non-relational or specialized stores (MongoDB, vector databases such as Pinecone). Expertise in all is not required, but you must guide direction, judge quality, and grow specialists across the estate
• Strong AWS depth running a database estate primarily on EC2, treating cloud cost as a first-class engineering concern; working Azure knowledge is useful
• A track record of defining and driving programs end to end, including migration or modernization work you initiated and owned, not just projects you were assigned
• Robust, hands-on AI ability to build observability and tooling quickly; this is critical, not optional
• Strong judgment under pressure and a bias to own the ambiguous, unowned problem rather than route it away
• Familiarity with security, compliance, and operational best practices; financial services or other regulated, high-availability experience preferred

This position requires fluent written and oral communication in English.

Applicants must be authorized to work for any employer in the U.S. We are unable to sponsor or take over sponsorship of an employment Visa at this time.

Health & Wellness

• Hybrid Work Opportunities
• Flexible Time Off
• Career Development & Mentoring Programs
• Health & Wellness Benefits, including competitive health insurance offerings and generous paid parental leave for eligible new parents
• Community Volunteering & Company Philanthropy Programs
• Employee Peer Recognition Programs – “You Earned it”

Click here to find out more about the benefits we offer.

Our Culture & Commitment:

We’re proud to foster a supportive, inclusive environment where career growth, collaboration, and wellness are prioritized. And our benefits go beyond healthcare—offering resources for physical, mental, and professional well-being. Click here to find out more about the benefits we offer. Q2 employees are encouraged to give back through volunteer work and nonprofit support through our Spark Program (see more). We believe in making an impact—in the industry and in the community.

We are an Equal Opportunity Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, age, disability, genetic information, or veteran status.

Applicants in California or Washington State may not be exempt from federal and state overtime requirements.