Software Engineer, Database Infrastructure

Jobtailor; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 140,000 - 210,000; Full time

Job summary

Jobtailor in San Francisco is seeking a senior infrastructure engineer to help build tooling for engineering teams to provision and access new datastores, while evaluating scalable storage systems. You will own Kafka capacity planning, partitioning, and reliability at scale, and operate DynamoDB and other non-relational datastores.

Responsibilities include coordinating migrations across MySQL, Postgres, Redis, and Kafka with minimal disruption, and driving optimization, automation, and data

Qualifications

• 6+ years of software engineering experience building and operating large-scale infrastructure systems.
• Production experience with streaming infrastructure (Kafka) and/or non-relational datastores (DynamoDB).
• Strong understanding of distributed systems fundamentals, partitioning, replication, and failure modes.
• Experience coordinating migrations or topology changes with minimal disruption in production.
• Experience running production cloud infrastructure including Redis and Kafka platforms.
• Track record of infrastructure optimization at scale.
• Strong communication and ability to simplify complexity across teams.
• Ability to operate in an AI-native environment and use AI tooling for optimization.

Responsibilities

• Build tooling and platforms for engineering teams to provision and access new datastores.
• Evaluate and pilot highly available, horizontally scalable storage systems.
• Own Kafka capacity planning, partitioning, performance tuning, and reliability at scale.
• Stand up and operate non-relational datastores such as DynamoDB.
• Coordinate migrations and topology changes across MySQL, Postgres, Redis, and Kafka with minimal production disruption.
• Drive efficiency and reliability improvements through query and consumer optimization, caching strategies, workload management, automation, and data integrity.
• Participate in on-call and reduce long-term operational burden.
• Partner with product engineering teams and share operational expertise.

Skills

Software Engineering

Streaming Infrastructure

Non-Relational Datastores

Distributed Systems

Cloud Infrastructure

Query Optimization

Performance Tuning

Data Consistency

Automation

Kubernetes

Tools

Kafka

DynamoDB

MySQL

Postgres

Redis

ValKey Caching Systems

AI Tooling

Kubernetes

Job description

• Build tooling and platforms for engineering teams to provision and access new datastores
• Evaluate and pilot highly available, horizontally scalable storage systems
• Own Kafka capacity planning, partitioning, performance tuning, and reliability at scale
• Stand up and operate non-relational datastores such as DynamoDB
• Coordinate migrations and topology changes across MySQL, Postgres, Redis, and Kafka with minimal production disruption
• Drive efficiency and reliability improvements through query and consumer optimization, caching strategies, workload management, automation, and data consistency, integrity, and security standards
• Participate in on-call and reduce long-term operational burden
• Partner with product engineering teams and share operational expertise

Requirements

• 6+ years of software engineering experience building and operating large-scale infrastructure systems
• Deep hands-on expertise in streaming infrastructure (Kafka) and/or non-relational datastores (DynamoDB or similar) in production at scale
• Strong understanding of distributed systems fundamentals, including partitioning, replication, consistency models, and failure modes
• Proven experience coordinating production migrations or topology changes with minimal disruption
• Experience running production cloud infrastructure, including Redis/ValKey caching systems and Kafka streaming platforms
• Track record of driving infrastructure optimization at scale
• Strong communication skills and ability to simplify technical complexity and collaborate across teams
• Ability to operate in an AI-native environment and use AI tooling for query optimization, performance evaluation, and infrastructure automation
• Bonus: Experience with self-hosted distributed databases on Kubernetes, horizontal sharding, or service/vertical extraction from monolithic architectures
• Bonus: Experience with Ruby on Rails or similar MVC frameworks at scale

Core Competencies

Demonstrates extensive experience in building and operating large-scale infrastructure systems, with a strong focus on streaming infrastructure and non-relational datastores. Proven ability to optimize performance, manage migrations, and collaborate effectively across engineering teams.

Highest-signal resume keywords

• Kafka Capacity Planning
• DynamoDB Management
• Distributed Systems Fundamentals
• Production Migration Coordination
• Infrastructure Optimization

ATS Optimization Keywords

Hard Skills

• Software Engineering
• Streaming Infrastructure
• Non-Relational Datastores
• Distributed Systems
• Cloud Infrastructure
• Query Optimization
• Performance Tuning
• Data Consistency
• Automation
• Kubernetes

Soft Skills

• Strong Communication
• Collaboration

Industry Keywords

• Infrastructure Systems
• Operational Burden Reduction
• Horizontal Scalability
• Data Integrity
• Service Extraction

Tools & Technologies

• Kafka
• DynamoDB
• MySQL
• Postgres
• Redis
• ValKey Caching Systems
• AI Tooling