Principal Software Engineer - Database & Data Platform

RELX; Alpharetta (GA); On-site; USD 115,400 - 192,300; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health benefits

401(k) with match

Wellbeing program

Paid time off & volunteering

Job summary

RELX is seeking a Consulting / Principal Software Engineer to lead design, optimization, and management of large-scale database systems and backend platforms.

The role requires deep database architecture expertise, performance tuning, and Java-based development, with the ability to advise on best practices across data engineering and system design. You will partner with cross-functional stakeholders to deliver scalable data solutions and provide technical leadership.

Qualifications

• 8+ years of software engineering with a strong database focus.
• Relational databases (MySQL preferred) and data modeling.
• Advanced proficiency in SQL development and performance tuning.
• Strong experience with Java, JDBC, and ORM frameworks (Hibernate/JPA).
• Proven experience diagnosing and resolving complex production issues.
• Solid understanding of transaction management, concurrency, and system performance.
• Hands-on Unix/Linux environments and shell scripting.

Responsibilities

• Design and build database schemas, tables, indexes, and constraints with efficient data modeling for OLTP and OLAP.
• Write and optimize complex SQL queries using joins, subqueries, CTEs, and window functions to improve performance.
• Develop and maintain stored procedures, triggers, and functions with strong ownership of transactions.
• Debug and resolve production issues, including slow queries, deadlocks, and high resource usage.
• Implement Java-based data access layers using JDBC and ORM frameworks for scalability.
• Build and support ETL pipelines for large datasets, including data extraction and transformation.
• Perform data analysis, validation, and reporting to ensure data accuracy.
• Write Bash/shell scripts to automate database operations (backups, cron, monitoring).

Skills

Software engineering

Database focus

Java

SQL

Performance tuning

Production debugging

Unix/Linux

Shell scripting

Data modeling

Tools

MySQL

JDBC

Hibernate

JPA

ETL

Job description

RELX is seeking a Consulting / Principal Software Engineer to lead design, optimization, and management of large-scale database systems and backend platforms.

The role requires deep database architecture expertise, performance tuning, and Java-based development, with the ability to advise on best practices across data engineering and system design. You will partner with cross-functional stakeholders to deliver scalable data solutions and provide technical leadership.