Senior Database Reliability Engineer

MathWorks; Natick (MA); On-site; USD 122,300 - 189,600; Full time

Job summary

MathWorks is seeking a Senior Database Reliability Engineer in Natick, MA to ensure reliability, performance, and security of critical databases. You will partner with SREs, developers, cloud engineers, and security to design and operate scalable production systems.

This role emphasizes automation, IaC, observability, and platform engineering beyond traditional DB administration, shaping the future of database services across IT Platform Engineering.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree plus 6+ years of database reliability or equivalent experience.
• Experience with Microsoft SQL Server administration, performance tuning, high availability, disaster recovery.
• Strong collaboration with SREs, security, and application teams.
• Proficient in automation, IaC, and observability practices.

Responsibilities

• Own reliability, availability, recoverability, security, and performance of production database platforms.
• Drive proactive monitoring, capacity planning, and incident prevention.
• Design and maintain automation to reduce toil and enable self-service.
• Lead cloud modernization and hybrid database architectures.
• Mentor teams and contribute to reliability standards.

Skills

Microsoft SQL Server

Observability & monitoring

Automation & IaC

Cloud architecture

SRE collaboration

Education

Bachelor's degree in CS/Engineering or equivalent

Tools

SSMS

SQL Server tools

Job description

Senior Database Reliability Engineer

• Team: Information Technology
• Location: US-MA-Natick
• Salary Range: USD 122,300 - 189,600

Job Summary

As a Senior Database Reliability Engineer (DBRE), you will be responsible for ensuring the reliability, performance, scalability, security, and operational excellence of critical business databases and the applications they support. Serving as a subject matter expert in Microsoft SQL Server and related database technologies, you will partner closely with Site Reliability Engineers (SREs), application teams, cloud engineers, and security partners to design, operate, and continuously improve resilient production systems. This role combines deep database expertise with modern reliability engineering practices to prevent issues before they occur and enable business-critical services to operate confidently at-scale.

As part of the IT Platform Engineering organization, you will approach operations through an engineering lens; leveraging automation, observability, cloud technologies, and continuous improvement to reduce operational toil and enhance the developer-experience. This position extends beyond database administration to include platform engineering, architecture influence, cloud modernization, and cross-stack troubleshooting. You will help shape the future of database services at MathWorks by building reliable, secure, and scalable solutions that enable teams across the organization to deliver and operate software effectively.

Responsibilities

• Database Reliability & Operations - Own the reliability, availability, recoverability, security, and performance of production database platforms supporting critical business applications. Drive operational excellence through proactive monitoring, capacity planning, incident prevention, and continuous improvement of database services. Partner with application teams and SREs to diagnose and resolve complex production issues across the application and database stack.
• Engineering, Automation & Platform Enablement - Design, build, and maintain automation that reduces operational toil, improves consistency, and enables self-service capabilities. Implement Infrastructure-as-Code, operational tooling, CI/CD integrations, and reliability-focused engineering practices that improve database and platform operations at scale.
• Cloud & Architecture Engineering - Provide database expertise during application, platform, and cloud architecture discussions. Lead database modernization initiatives, evaluate cloud-native services, and help design scalable, resilient, and secure database solutions across on-premises, hybrid, and cloud environments.
• Security, Governance & Risk Management - Partner with security and compliance teams to implement secure-by-default database capabilities including access controls, encryption, auditing, disaster recovery, backup strategies, and data protection controls. Continuously assess and reduce operational and security risks.
• Collaboration, Knowledge Sharing & Reliability Leadership - Operate as a trusted database subject matter expert within a swarming-culture engineering organization. Mentor peers, participate in incident reviews, contribute to technical standards, and help advance platform reliability practices across IT Platform Engineering and its adjacent teams.

Minimum Qualifications

• A bachelor's degree and 6 years of professional work experience (or a master's degree and 3 years of professional work experience, or equivalent experience) is required.
• Demonstrated experience in/with Database

Additional Qualifications

Knowledge

• Deep knowledge of relational database systems, with expert-level proficiency in Microsoft SQL Server administration, performance tuning, troubleshooting, high availability, disaster recovery, and operational management.
• Strong understanding of database architecture, data modeling, indexing strategies, query optimization, capacity planning, and scalability patterns.
• Knowledge of database security principles including access controls, encryption, auditing, compliance, and data protection.
• Understanding of modern cloud database platforms and services, including AWS/RDS, Azure, and hybrid cloud architectures.
• Knowledge of Infrastructure as Code (IaC), automation, scripting, and platform engineering practices.
• Familiarity with observability concepts including monitoring, alerting, logging, performance analysis, and operational readiness.
• Understanding of software development lifecycle (SDLC), Agile delivery methodologies, DevOps practices, CI/CD pipelines, and developer platform concepts.

Experience

• Significant experience operating and supporting production database environments at enterprise scale.
• Demonstrated experience diagnosing and resolving complex reliability and performance issues spanning databases, applications, infrastructure, and cloud services.
• Experience designing and implementing automation to improve reliability, reduce operational toil, and increase platform scalability.
• Experience partnering with application engineers, Site Reliability Engineers (SREs), cloud engineers, and security teams to deliver resilient solutions.
• Experience supporting cloud migrations, database modernization initiatives, and hybrid platform environments.

Key Success Traits

• Systems-thinking mindset focused on reliability, automation, scalability, security, and continuous improvement.
• Strong collaboration and communication skills with the ability to influence technical decisions across organizational boundaries.
• Ability to serve as a trusted database subject matter expert while contributing broadly to team and platform outcomes.