Staff Engineer II - Database Engineering

Western Alliance Bancorporation; Columbus (OH); On-site; USD 140,000 - 190,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health benefits

Job summary

Western Alliance Bank is seeking a Staff Engineer II for Database Engineering to lead Azure Cosmos DB design, security, and reliability across AI workloads. You will partner with application and cloud teams, establish governance and access controls, and drive performance and recoverability standards.

The role requires guiding cross-functional projects, communicating with stakeholders, and maturing the database support model while ensuring compliance with IT policies and enterprise standards.

Qualifications

• 7+ years of related IT experience in IT App Support, IT Development, IT Networking, or similar field.
• Bachelor’s degree in related field is required.
• Previous leadership experience preferred.
• Advanced knowledge of applicable regulatory and legal compliance obligations, rules and regulations, industry standards and practices.
• Advanced proven experience in leading cross-functional teams and managing multiple projects simultaneously, including Azure DevOps.
• Advanced ability to see the big picture and align projects with organizational goals; skilled at governance patterns and architectural compliance.
• Advanced speaking and writing communication skills.
• May require up to 25% travel.

Responsibilities

• Provide expertise across tools and products within a defined domain to ensure solutions are safe, secure, compliant, and reliable.
• Lead the design, security, governance, performance, and operational support of Azure Cosmos DB and related cloud-native services for AI workloads.
• Establish secure access patterns and enterprise standards for Cosmos DB across teams.
• Collaborate with application and cloud engineering teams to ensure production readiness and enterprise standards.
• Develop and maintain technical documentation, configurations, and procedures.
• Support the AI Program workloads and mature the database support model for expanding adoption.

Skills

Cross-functional leadership

Azure DevOps

Risk management

Stakeholder communication

Governance

Architectural design

Project management

Security compliance

Education

Bachelor's degree in related field

Tools

Azure Cosmos DB

Job description

Job Title:

Staff Engineer II - Database Engineering

Location:

TX - Dallas/Irving

What you'll do:

As a Staff Engineer II, this role provides expertise across a suite of technical tools and products within a defined domain to ensure solutions are safe, secure, compliant, and reliable. The role identifies development and support needs while taking on design responsibilities in support of project tasks. As the Staff Engineer II, this individual facilitates dialogue and activities that promote collaboration across teams, including teams outside the immediate domain, and develops effective presentations and narratives for stakeholders.

• The Azure Cosmos DBA Engineer is a senior database engineering role responsible for the design, administration, security, governance, performance, and operational support of Azure Cosmos DB and related cloud-native database services, primarily supporting the AI Program.
• This role serves as a technical authority for Cosmos DB usage across AI workloads, with responsibility for establishing secure access patterns, supporting production readiness, partnering with application and cloud engineering teams, and ensuring database services meet enterprise standards for security, resiliency, recoverability, compliance, and audit readiness.
• The role helps formalize the operating model for Cosmos DB support, including ownership boundaries between application teams, cloud/platform teams, and the DBA organization. This includes clarifying responsibilities across control-plane and data-plane access, RBAC, shared key usage, managed identities, and enterprise standards.
• Lead the strategic planning of a project as it relates to technical solution design.
• Design and implement engineering principles aimed at reliability practices and sound recovery procedures.
• Design application-specific performance monitoring metrics that can be captured and shared with business partners.
• Develop and maintain technical documentation, including system configurations, procedures, and desktop procedures, while ensuring compliance with IT policies, procedures, industry standards, and audit expectations.

What you'll need:

• 7+ years of related experience IT App Support, IT Development, IT Networking, or similar field.
• Bachelor's degree in related field required.
• Previous leadership experience preferred.
• Intermediate to advanced knowledge of general Financial Services or Banking is preferred.
• Advanced knowledge of applicable regulatory and legal compliance obligations, rules and regulations, industry standards and practices.
• Advanced proven experience in leading cross-functional teams and managing multiple projects simultaneously. Additional experience with pipeline development and leveraging Azure DevOps while working on multiple projects simultaneously.
• Advanced ability to see the big picture and align projects with organizational goals. Capable of leading and motivating cross-functional teams. Expertise in resolving conflicts and addressing challenges as well as skilled at identifying and mitigating risks at the project level. Proficient in governance patterns tied to intake, technical reviews and architectural compliance.
• Advanced speaking and writing communication skills.
• May require up to 25% travel.

AI Program Support

• Support Azure Cosmos DB capabilities required by AI Program workloads, including AI Agent Memory use cases.
• Collaborate with AI delivery teams to ensure database services are designed for reliability, security, performance, and compliance.
• Provide database engineering guidance for AI-related application patterns, including data access, throughput planning, partitioning strategy, availability, and operational controls.
• Help mature the database support model for AI workloads as adoption expands across the enterprise.

Benefits you'll love:

We offer all the important things you'd want - like competitive salaries, an ownership stake in the company, medical and dental insurance, time off, a great 401k matching program, tuition assistance program, an employee volunteer program, and a wellness program. In addition, you'll have the opportunity to bolster your business knowledge, learning the ins and outs of how successful companies operate and manage their finances, giving you invaluable hands‑on experience to help grow your career!

About the company:

Western Alliance Bank, Member FDIC, is a wholly owned subsidiary of Western Alliance Bancorporation. Serving clients nationwide, Western Alliance Bank includes six legacy bank brands - Alliance Association Bank, Alliance Bank of Arizona, Bank of Nevada, Bridge Bank, First Independent Bank and Torrey Pines Bank - that remain part of the company's heritage, as well as AmeriHome Mortgage, a Western Alliance Bank Company.

Western Alliance Bancorporation is committed to equal employment and will consider all qualified applicants without regard to race, sex, color, religion, age, nation origin, marital status, disability, protected veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity or genetic information. Western Alliance Bancorporation is committed to working with and providing reasonable accommodations for individuals with disabilities. If you are an individual with a disability and require a reasonable accommodation to complete any part of the application process and/or need an alternative method of applying, please email [e-mail] or call 602-386-2488. When contacting us, please provide your contact information and state the nature of your accessibility issue. We will only respond to inquiries concerning requests that involve a reasonable accommodation in the application process.

Western Alliance Bancorporation