Senior PostgreSQL DBA

Vsolutions Technologies; Los Angeles (CA); Hybrid; USD 140,000 - 190,000; Full time

Job summary

Vsolutions Technologies is seeking a Senior PostgreSQL DBA to own the design, availability, performance, and security of our Azure-hosted PostgreSQL estate. You will manage both Azure Database for PostgreSQL and self-managed PostgreSQL on Azure VMs across Linux and Windows servers.

This hands-on role requires deep expertise in high-availability architectures, failover operations, and major version upgrades, including PostgreSQL 17/18 and upcoming 19 releases.

Qualifications

• Azure hosting experience is non-negotiable; on-premises or other clouds only are not acceptable.
• 7+ years of production PostgreSQL administration, with 3+ years on PG 14+.
• 3+ years hosting PostgreSQL in Microsoft Azure, including Azure Database for PostgreSQL flexible server.
• Experience owning a production active-passive HA cluster with a real failover.
• Experience designing/operating active-active/bi-directional replication and conflict handling.
• Administer PostgreSQL on Linux (RHEL/CentOS) and Windows Server in production.
• Familiarity with security, monitoring, and performance tuning in a large PostgreSQL estate.

Responsibilities

• Own the design, availability, performance, and security of our production PostgreSQL estate on Azure.
• Architect high-availability and disaster-recovery topology (active-passive and active-active).
• Lead upgrades to PostgreSQL 17, 18, and future 19 releases, including testing.
• Serve as final escalation point for database incidents and ensure rapid resolution.
• Write/runbooks and documentation for runbooks, architecture decisions, and change requests.
• Participate in a 24x7 on-call rotation as needed.
• Collaborate with DevOps and SRE teams using IaC (Terraform/Bicep), Azure CLI, and PowerShell.

Skills

PostgreSQL administration

Azure hosting experience

HA/DR design

Read execution plans

Security/compliance knowledge

Strong written communication

On-call rotation participation

Education

RHCSA or equivalent Linux certification

Tools

Azure Database for PostgreSQL (flexible server)

pgBackRest

Barman

pg_upgrade

PgBouncer

Patroni

Etcd/Consul

Terraform or Bicep

Azure CLI/PowerShell

Job description

Job Location: West Los Angeles, CA (Hybrid 3 days onsite week)

Job Type: Contract

Job Description

The Senior PostgreSQL DBA owns the design, availability, performance, and security of our production PostgreSQL estate hosted in Microsoft Azure. The role covers both Azure Database for PostgreSQL (flexible server) and self-managed PostgreSQL on Azure virtual machines running Red Hat Enterprise Linux, CentOS Stream, and Windows Server.

This is a hands-on senior engineering role, not a supervisory one. The DBA is the final escalation point for database incidents, the architect of our high-availability and disaster-recovery topology (active-passive and active-active), and the person who keeps us current on PostgreSQL 17, 18, and the upcoming 19 release.

Required qualifications

All items in this section are must-haves. Azure hosting experience is non-negotiable: candidates whose PostgreSQL experience is only on-premises or on another cloud will not be considered.

Experience

• 7+ years administering PostgreSQL in production, with at least 3 years on PostgreSQL 14 or later.
• 3+ years hosting and operating PostgreSQL in Microsoft Azure, including at least 2 years on Azure Database for PostgreSQL flexible server (not Single Server, which was retired in March 2025).
• Demonstrated ownership of a production active-passive HA cluster, including at least one real (not test) failover.
• Demonstrated design or operation of a production active-active / bi-directional replication topology, with a clear explanation of how conflicts were avoided or resolved.
• Administered PostgreSQL on both Linux (RHEL or CentOS) and Windows Server in production.
• Azure Database for PostgreSQL flexible server: HA modes, read replicas, PITR and geo-restore, major version upgrade, server parameters, extensions allow-list, PgBouncer, maintenance windows.
• Microsoft Entra ID authentication for PostgreSQL and managed identities.
• Azure Monitor, Log Analytics (KQL), and Azure Advisor for PostgreSQL.
• Infrastructure as code for Azure: Terraform or Bicep, plus Azure CLI and PowerShell.
• Streaming replication, replication slots, logical replication (publications and subscriptions), and pglogical.
• Patroni or an equivalent cluster manager; etcd or Consul; HAProxy or PgBouncer.
• Backup and recovery with pgBackRest or Barman, WAL archiving to object storage, and incremental backups.
• Deep query tuning: reading execution plans, index design, statistics, partitioning, autovacuum tuning, and bloat management.
• Major version upgrades via pg_upgrade, logical replication, and pg_createsubscriber.
• Working knowledge of PostgreSQL 18 features (asynchronous I/O, UUIDv7, virtual generated columns, temporal constraints, OAuth, data checksums on by default) and awareness of what changes in PostgreSQL 19.

Operating systems and tooling

• RHEL/CentOS: systemd, SELinux, LVM, package management from the PGDG repository, shell scripting (bash).
• Windows Server: service management, NTFS permissions, PowerShell scripting, Windows-specific PostgreSQL installation and upgrade behavior.
• Git-based workflows, CI/CD pipelines, and configuration management (Ansible preferred).

Professional

• Experience leading Sev-1 incident response and writing post-mortems.
• Clear written communication: runbooks, architecture decision records, and change requests that non-DBAs can follow.
• Ability to participate in a 24x7 on-call rotation.

Preferred qualifications:

• None of these are required, but each one strengthens a candidate's case.
• Red Hat Certified System Administrator (RHCSA) or equivalent Linux certification.
• Hands-on testing of PostgreSQL 19 betas or release candidates, especially REPACK CONCURRENTLY, parallel autovacuum, WAIT FOR LSN, and sequence replication.
• Experience with Azure Database for PostgreSQL elastic clusters (Citus-based sharding) or with Citus on self-managed clusters.
• Experience with EDB Postgres Distributed, pgEdge, or another commercial multi-master product, with a clear view of what native tooling can and cannot replace.
• Experience with Azure Database Migration Service for online migrations from Oracle, SQL Server, or other PostgreSQL sources.
• Experience operating pgvector, pg_diskann, or Apache AGE on flexible server for AI or graph workloads.
• Kubernetes-hosted PostgreSQL on AKS using CloudNativePG, Crunchy Postgres Operator, or Zalando Postgres Operator.
• Contributions to the PostgreSQL community: patches, extensions, conference talks, or documentation.
• Familiarity with Oracle, SQL Server, or MySQL for cross-platform migration work.
• Security and compliance background: SOC 2, HIPAA, PCI DSS, or FedRAMP audits involving database controls.