Staff Database Platform Reliability Engineer

Staff Database Platform Reliability Engineer

We are seeking an experienced SRE/DBRE to ensure reliability, performance, scalability, and operational excellence of our multi-cloud DBaaS platform across Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services, and Google Cloud Platform. This role combines deep database expertise with SRE principles to build highly available, automated, and resilient database platforms. The DBRE Lead will drive operational standards, automation frameworks, and reliability engineering practices across distributed cloud environments.

What We’re Looking For

• 8-10+ years in DBA / Platform Engineering
• Strong multi-cloud experience (Azure / AWS / GCP – at least two)
• Deep HA/DR & performance tuning expertise
• Automation-first mindset (Terraform, scripting, CI/CD)
• Experience in SaaS/DBaaS environments preferred

Key Skills and Competencies

For a Site Reliability Engineer (SRE) in a DBaaS (Database-as-a-Service) support role, the following mandatory skills are typically required:

Database Administration (DBA) Skills

• Primary Database: MySQL
• Secondary Database: PostgreSQL, SQLServer
• Database Backup & Recovery: Tools and strategies for database backups and disaster recovery.
• Performance Tuning: Query optimization, indexing strategies, and database performance troubleshooting.
• Database Security: User management, roles, access control, and auditing.

Cloud Infrastructure Knowledge (DBaaS)

• Cloud Platforms: AWS (RDS, Aurora), Azure (Cosmos DB, SQL Database), GCP (Cloud SQL, Firestore).
• Infrastructure as Code (IaC): Terraform, CloudFormation, Kubernetes.
• Kubernetes & Containers: Running databases in containers (like Kubernetes).
• Observability Tools: ELK stack (Elasticsearch, Logstash, Kibana)
• Database Migration: Migrating databases across different platforms or cloud environments.
• Database Scaling: Vertical and horizontal scaling techniques in cloud environments.

SRE Principles (Site Reliability Engineering)

• Incident Management: Handling database outages, incident response, and on-call rotations.
• Monitoring and Alerting: Tools like Prometheus, Grafana, Datadog, CloudWatch.
• Service Level Objectives (SLOs) / Service Level Agreements (SLAs): Ensuring uptime and performance targets.
• Disaster Recovery Planning: Ensuring high availability (HA) and disaster recovery (DR) solutions.

Scripting and Automation

• Scripting Languages: Python, Shell scripting, Bash, PowerShell.
• Automation Tools: Ansible, Puppet, Chef.
• Infrastructure Automation: Automating database deployment, patching, and scaling.

Networking and Infrastructure

• Networking Basics: TCP/IP, DNS, Firewall, Load Balancers.
• Database Connectivity: Connection pooling, failover strategies, and multi-region deployment.
• Storage and Disk Management: Understanding IOPS, latency, and throughput.

Expertise in Linux OS

• Operating Systems: RHEL, UBunto, Centos
• File Systems: Understanding of file systems (ext4, XFS, etc.), permissions, and ownership (chmod, chown, ACLs).
• Process Management: Knowledge of process monitoring, management, and troubleshooting (ps, top, htop, kill, pkill, etc.).
• Monitoring Tools: Proficiency with tools like top, htop, vmstat, iostat, sar, and dstat to monitor CPU, memory, disk I/O, and network usage.
• Log Analysis: Ability to analyze system logs (/var/log/, journalctl, dmesg) for troubleshooting.
• Resource Limits: Understanding of resource limits (CPU, memory, disk, network) and how they impact database performance.
• Partitioning and Storage: Knowledge of partitioning tools (fdisk, parted) and file system management (mkfs, mount, umount). Understanding of RAID configurations and Logical Volume Management (LVM) for storage scalability.

Troubleshooting and Debugging

• Log Analysis: Reading and analysing database and system logs.
• Root Cause Analysis (RCA): Performing in-depth analysis after major incidents.
• Query Performance: Analysing slow queries, deadlocks, and resource contention.

Soft Skills

• Communication Skills: Clear communication with stakeholders and engineering teams.
• Problem-Solving: Ability to troubleshoot complex database issues under pressure.
• Collaboration: Working closely with DevOps, Infrastructure, and Engineering teams.

About Rackspace Technology

We are the multicloud solutions experts. We combine our expertise with the world’s leading technologies — across applications, data and security — to deliver end-to-end solutions. We have a proven record of advising customers based on their business challenges, designing solutions that scale, building and managing those solutions, and optimizing returns into the future. Named a best place to work, year after year according to Fortune, Forbes and Glassdoor, we attract and develop world-class talent. Join us on our mission to embrace technology, empower customers and deliver the future.

More on Rackspace Technology

Though we’re all different, Rackers thrive through our connection to a central goal: to be a valued member of a winning team on an inspiring mission. We bring our whole selves to work every day. And we embrace the notion that unique perspectives fuel innovation and enable us to best serve our customers and communities around the globe. We welcome you to apply today and want you to know that we are committed to offering equal employment opportunity without regard to age, color, disability, gender reassignment or identity or expression, genetic information, marital or civil partner status, pregnancy or maternity status, military or veteran status, nationality, ethnic or national origin, race, religion or belief, sexual orientation, or any legally protected characteristic. If you have a disability or special need that requires accommodation, please let us know.

Key skills/competency

• Staff Database Platform Reliability Engineer
• Site Reliability Engineering (SRE)
• Database Administration (DBA)
• Multi-cloud Platforms (Azure, AWS, GCP)
• Performance Tuning
• Automation (Terraform, Scripting, CI/CD)
• High Availability (HA) / Disaster Recovery (DR)
• Kubernetes
• Linux OS
• Incident Management