Senior Software Engineer | Database Optimization

castaigroupinc; United States; Remote; USD 80,000 - 111,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity options

Annual learning budget

Equipment budget

Team events and annual hackathon

Job summary

castaigroupinc is building production systems for an autonomous database administration product, delivering a high-performance gateway and analysis agent that identify performance issues, propose improvements, and verify changes safely.

The role involves shaping architecture and technical direction, with focus on correctness in caching, consistency, and recommendations that affect live customer workloads, while collaborating with product and engineering teams.

Qualifications

• Experience building production services in Go.
• Deep knowledge of PostgreSQL or MySQL and database tuning beyond ORM use.
• Understanding of database clients, drivers, and wire protocols.
• Experience with query profiling, index design, performance tuning, and production projects.
• Strong debugging skills and clear English communication.

Responsibilities

• Design, build, and operate a database gateway with caching and rate limiting.
• Develop services in Go and high-performance components in Rust.
• Build features for index selection, query analysis, and query improvements.
• Address cache invalidation and data consistency; validate recommendations before applying.
• Investigate production issues; analyze query behavior and workload performance.
• Collaborate with product and engineering on architecture, roadmap, and technical decisions.

Skills

Go development

Debugging

English communication

Tools

PostgreSQL

MySQL

Prometheus

Grafana

OpenTelemetry

Job description

Role overview

Build production systems for an autonomous database administration product that identifies database performance issues, proposes improvements, and helps verify those changes safely. The role spans a high-performance gateway and an analysis agent, with scope to shape architecture and technical direction. Correctness matters throughout: changes to caching, consistency, or recommendations can affect live customer workloads.

Responsibilities

• Design, build, and operate a database gateway that provides capabilities such as caching and rate limiting.
• Develop services in Go and contribute to high-performance components in Rust.
• Build recommendation features for index selection, query analysis, and query improvements.
• Address cache invalidation and data consistency, and create ways to validate recommendations before application.
• Investigate production issues across the gateway, agent, and database systems; analyse query behaviour and workload performance.
• Work with product and engineering colleagues on open-ended problems and contribute to architecture, roadmap, and technical decisions.

Requirements

• Professional experience building production services in Go, with strong software engineering fundamentals and maintainable design practices.
• In-depth knowledge of PostgreSQL or MySQL, including database tuning beyond ORM use.
• Understanding of database clients, drivers, and wire protocols.
• Experience with query profiling, index design, performance tuning, and complex projects from design through production.
• Strong debugging skills, written and spoken English, and comfort adapting to ambiguity and helping set technical direction.
• Current residence in Bulgaria, Croatia, Estonia, Greece, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, or Ukraine; visa sponsorship and work permits are not provided.

Nice to have

• Rust experience, especially for network services or proxies; experience with database proxies, gateways, or poolers.
• Background in cache invalidation, query-plan analysis, index recommendation, or query optimisation tools.
• Experience validating changes with workload replay, shadow traffic, or benchmarks, and using observability tools such as Prometheus, Grafana, or OpenTelemetry.
• Familiarity with Kubernetes and cloud infrastructure.

Benefits and work setup

• Remote-first work; gross monthly pay of €6,500-€9,000 depending on experience and level, plus equity options.
• Annual learning budget, 10% of working time for personal projects or development, equipment budget, and additional days off.
• Work in a global technical team with short delivery cycles; team events and an annual hackathon are also offered.