Senior Database Engineer – DevSecOps

Why you'll love this Nue.io opportunity!

Responsibilities

• Own and operate Nue's database fleets across AWS RDS & NeonDB (PostgreSQL), with a focus on reliability, availability, and cost efficiency.
• Lead the migration from self-managed RDS instances to fully managed PostgreSQL solutions (Aurora/NeonDB), defining the migration strategy, testing plan, and rollout approach.
• Design and drive the sharding strategy for our multi-tenant SaaS platform, defining shard key selection, tenant placement, cross-shard query patterns, and rebalancing procedures to support 10x growth.
• Drive database performance — proactively identify and resolve slow queries, optimize indexing strategies, tune connection pooling, and ensure transactional integrity across our multi-tenant SaaS platform.
• Design and implement database monitoring and alerting at the infrastructure and application level — covering slow queries, replication lag, connection saturation, CPU/memory utilization, and storage growth.
• Architect replication strategies including read/write separation, streaming replication, and failover strategies to optimize read-heavy workloads, reduce primary database load, and ensure high availability.
• Plan for scale — conduct load testing and capacity planning to answer critical questions like "How many more customers can our database support?" and "How do we prepare for 10x growth?"
• Build and maintain backup, restore, and disaster recovery procedures — ensuring RPO/RTO targets are met and regularly tested.
• Ensure zero-downtime database migrations — design backward and forward compatible schema changes that support continuous deployment.
• Collaborate with product engineering teams (Billing, Lifecycle, Data & Integrations, DevEx) to review schema designs, optimize queries, and establish database best practices.
• Leverage AI-powered tooling throughout all aspects of the role — from migration planning and query optimization to monitoring, runbook automation, and operational efficiency.
• Strengthen security posture — manage encryption at rest and in transit, access controls, secrets rotation, and audit logging for database systems in alignment with SOC 2 Type II compliance.
• Participate in on-call rotations and own the resolution of database-related production incidents.

What We’re Looking For

• 7+ years of experience in backend or infrastructure engineering, with at least 3+ years focused on database engineering or database reliability in production SaaS environments.
• Deep hands-on experience with PostgreSQL — including query optimization, EXPLAIN analysis, indexing strategies, partitioning, vacuuming, and replication.
• Strong experience operating fully managed databases on AWS — RDS, Aurora, and/or serverless PostgreSQL (NeonDB, Aurora Serverless v2, Supabase, etc.).
• Experience designing and operating sharded database architectures and replication topologies at scale.
• Proven ability to plan and execute large-scale database migrations with minimal downtime.
• Experience with database monitoring and observability tools and frameworks (CloudWatch, pganalyze, HyperDX, Datadog, or similar).
• Solid understanding of Infrastructure as Code (Terraform/OpenTofu, CloudFormation) for managing database infrastructure.
• Demonstrated ability to leverage AI-assisted development tools (e.g., Copilot, Cursor, Claude) to accelerate engineering workflows and operational tasks.
• Experience with connection pooling (PgBouncer, RDS Proxy) and read replica architectures.
• Familiarity with CI/CD pipelines and schema migration tools (Flyway, Liquibase, or similar).
• Strong scripting skills (Bash, Python) for automation and operational tooling.
• Comfortable working in a fast-paced startup environment with a small, high-impact team.
• Excellent communication and collaboration skills — able to partner with engineering teams, explain trade-offs, and drive consensus.
• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or equivalent practical experience.

Preferred Skills

• Experience with MySQL/MariaDB in addition to PostgreSQL.
• Experience with NoSQL databases (e.g., DynamoDB) and in-memory data stores (Redis, Memcached).
• Familiarity with event streaming platforms (Kafka) and how they interact with database and caching systems.
• Knowledge of multi-tenant database architectures — schema-per-tenant, row-level isolation, connection management at scale.
• Experience with SOC 2, GDPR, or other compliance frameworks as they relate to data management.
• Domain knowledge in revenue operations, billing, or financial systems.
• Enthusiasm for AI tooling and prompt engineering to enhance database operations and development workflows.
• Experience with GitLab CI/CD pipelines.
• Deep, hands-on experience with AI coding agents and developer tooling (e.g., Copilot, Cursor, Claude, Codex) with established intuition for opportunities for increased productivity and leverage

What We Offer

• Competitive salary and benefits package.
• Equity participation in a high-growth company with significant upside potential.
• The opportunity to be the first dedicated database engineer — high ownership, high impact.
• A collaborative and supportive team environment that encourages personal and professional growth.
• Flexible remote/hybrid work arrangement within Canada.
• The chance to work on challenging infrastructure problems at a company scaling rapidly in the revenue lifecycle space.

What Success Looks Like

• Migration to fully-managed and highly-scalable PostgreSQL database infrastructure is complete; migration is planned, tested, and rolled out with zero data loss and minimal downtime, replacing self-managed RDS instances.
• A sharding strategy is in production — Shard key selection, tenant placement, and rebalancing procedures are defined and operational, positioning the data layer to support 10x customer growth.
• Read/write architecture is optimized — Streaming replication, read replicas, and failover strategies are in place, reducing primary database load and ensuring high availability targets are consistently met.
• Database performance is proactively managed, not reactive — Monitoring, alerting, and observability (slow queries, replication lag, connection saturation, resource utilization) are fully instrumented, with issues caught and resolved before they impact customers.
• AI is embedded across database operations — AI-powered tooling is actively used for migration planning, query optimization, monitoring, runbook automation, and day-to-day operational workflows — not as an afterthought, but as a force multiplier.
• Disaster recovery is tested and trusted — Backup, restore, and DR procedures meet defined RPO/RTO targets and are validated through regular drills.
• Engineering teams treat you as a partner — Product engineering squads (Billing, Lifecycle, Data & Integrations, DevEx) proactively engage you on schema design, query optimization, and database best practices.