Senior PostgreSQL Cloud DBA (Remote-First, AWS Aurora)

DrFirst; United States; On-site; USD 140,000 - 190,000; Full time

Job summary

DrFirst is seeking a cloud native Senior PostgreSQL Database Administrator for our System Operations team. This role sits at the center of how data moves through DrFirst across prescribers, pharmacies, EHRs, and patient channels, using PostgreSQL on AWS Aurora in an event-driven persistence architecture.

This hands-on role emphasizes automation, upgrades with minimal downtime, robust backup strategies, and collaboration with DevOps and application engineering to scale our healthcare data

Qualifications

• 4–7 years hands-on PostgreSQL DBA experience in cloud environments.
• Strong production experience with AWS Aurora PostgreSQL and RDS.
• Proficiency in performance tuning, query optimization, and root cause analysis.
• Backup and recovery expertise including PITR and high availability configurations.
• Experience with database security, user management, IAM integration, and access controls.
• Programming skills in Python and shell scripting for automation.
• Familiar with AWS services such as CloudWatch, Lambda, S3, Systems Manager, IAM, and Secrets Manager.
• Knowledge of modern persistence patterns: Kafka, Kinesis, RabbitMQ; Redis/ElastiCache; understanding broader data flow.
• Strong SQL skills and relational data modeling.
• Excellent problem solving, communication, and documentation skills.

Responsibilities

• Manage daily operations of PostgreSQL on AWS Aurora across accounts and environments.
• Own database setup, configuration, parameter tuning, and deployment using cloud native patterns.
• Execute upgrades, patches, and migrations with minimal downtime using blue/green and rolling deployments.
• Monitor health, performance, and capacity with CloudWatch, Performance Insights, AppDynamics, Grafana.
• Operate PostgreSQL as the system of record in an event-driven architecture with multiple upstream sources.
• Collaborate on data flows from Kafka/Kinesis into PostgreSQL and back to consumers.
• Cache with Redis/ElastiCache in front of PostgreSQL for high read workloads.
• Tune configurations for OLTP, read-heavy reporting, and mixed workloads; optimize indexes and queries.
• Design and implement backup/recovery strategies, DR drills, and multi-AZ/read replica setups.
• Provide technical support and document procedures; participate in on-call rotations.

Skills

PostgreSQL

AWS Aurora PostgreSQL

RDS

Performance tuning

Backup and recovery

Security and IAM

Python

Shell scripting

AWS services

Kafka/Kinesis/RabbitMQ

Redis/ElastiCache

SQL/Relational modeling

Communication & docs

Tools

Terraform

CloudFormation

Jenkins

GitLab CI

AWS CodePipeline

OpenSearch

Redis

ElastiCache

Job description

DrFirst is seeking a cloud native Senior PostgreSQL Database Administrator for our System Operations team. This role sits at the center of how data moves through DrFirst across prescribers, pharmacies, EHRs, and patient channels, using PostgreSQL on AWS Aurora in an event-driven persistence architecture.

This hands-on role emphasizes automation, upgrades with minimal downtime, robust backup strategies, and collaboration with DevOps and application engineering to scale our healthcare data