Senior SQL Database Engineer

Selby Jennings; New York (NY); On-site; USD 140,000 - 210,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health insurance

Job summary

Selby Jennings is seeking a Senior Database Platform Engineer to design, build, and support a modern database platform emphasizing automation and declarative management. You will drive scalable, secure, high-availability solutions across multiple database technologies.

The role focuses on IaC, CI/CD, GitOps, and observability, with a strong emphasis on reducing manual toil and enabling self-service capabilities for engineering teams.

Qualifications

• Experience designing and maintaining scalable, automated database platforms.
• Strong knowledge of declarative deployments and schema-as-code.
• Experience with enterprise-grade security, governance, and drift prevention.

Responsibilities

• Design, implement, and support database platforms with automated provisioning and lifecycle management.
• Build high-availability database solutions and automated deployment frameworks.
• Adopt declarative, state-based deployment practices with version-controlled changes.
• Manage schema-as-code with governance and drift prevention.
• Provision infrastructure using IaC for repeatable deployments.
• Develop CI/CD and GitOps workflows integrating DB deployments into pipelines.
• Build observability and monitoring solutions using modern tooling.
• Create migration and modernization tooling for platform transformations.
• Develop self-service capabilities and robust security controls across environments.

Skills

Automation mindset

Platform engineering

Cloud data platforms

CI/CD

GitOps

PowerShell

Python

Tools

Terraform

Kubernetes

CI/CD tooling

Observability tooling

Job description

The organization is seeking a Senior Database Platform Engineer to help design, build, and support a modern database platform. This role emphasizes automation, infrastructure-as-code, and declarative database management practices. The successful candidate will create scalable solutions that reduce manual operational effort while ensuring consistency, security, and reliability across multiple database technologies.

Key Responsibilities

• Design, implement, and support database platforms, including automated provisioning and lifecycle management.
• Build and maintain high-availability database solutions and automated deployment frameworks.
• Drive adoption of declarative, state-based database deployment practices, ensuring all changes are version-controlled, auditable, repeatable, and automated.
• Manage database schema as code with strict governance around change management and drift prevention.
• Provision and manage infrastructure using Infrastructure-as-Code tools to ensure repeatable and standardized deployments.
• Develop CI/CD and GitOps workflows that integrate database deployments into broader engineering processes.
• Build observability and monitoring solutions utilizing modern monitoring and telemetry frameworks.
• Create migration and modernization tooling to assist with platform transformations.
• Develop self-service capabilities and implement robust security controls across database environments.

Required Experience

• Strong hands-on expertise administering and optimizing enterprise database platforms, including performance tuning, indexing, high availability, replication, and security.
• Experience supporting modern cloud data platforms, including data modeling, security administration, ingestion, and performance optimization.
• Proven experience with Infrastructure-as-Code tools for provisioning and lifecycle management.
• Hands-on experience implementing declarative, state-based database deployment methodologies.
• Strong understanding of schema-as-code principles, versioned migrations, automated releases, and environment promotion strategies.
• Proficiency in scripting and automation using languages such as PowerShell and/or Python.
• Experience integrating database deployments into CI/CD pipelines and modern DevOps workflows.

Preferred Experience

• Exposure to additional database technologies, including relational, analytical, and distributed data platforms.
• Experience with caching technologies and modern data infrastructure components.
• Familiarity with container orchestration and cloud-native platforms.
• Experience building lakehouse architectures and data federation capabilities.
• Knowledge of workflow orchestration and data transformation tools.
• Experience with observability platforms, metrics collection, logging, and distributed tracing.
• Familiarity with reporting and business intelligence tools.

Ideal Candidate

• Passionate about automation and treating infrastructure and database changes as code.
• Strong platform engineering mindset with experience building scalable internal services.
• Comfortable operating across infrastructure, database, and application layers.
• Interested in modernizing traditional database administration practices through engineering-led solutions.
• Adaptable, curious, and eager to learn new technologies in a rapidly evolving environment.

Desired Skills and Experience

• SQL Server administration, performance tuning, indexing, replication, high availability, and security
• Cloud data warehouse experience (data modeling, ingestion, optimization, and access controls)
• Terraform and Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC)
• Database automation and declarative/state-based deployments
• Schema-as-code, version-controlled migrations, drift detection, and environment promotion
• CI/CD pipelines and GitOps workflows
• PowerShell and/or Python scripting
• Automated database provisioning and lifecycle management
• Monitoring, observability, and operational tooling
• High-availability and scalable database platform design
• PostgreSQL, Redis, and other database technologies
• Kubernetes and containerized environments
• Data lakehouse, data federation, and analytical database experience
• Workflow orchestration and data transformation tools
• BI/reporting tools and data visualization platforms
• Strong automation-first mindset with platform engineering and cloud-native experience
• Ability to work across infrastructure, database, and application layers
• Adaptable, collaborative, and eager to learn new technologies and methodologies