Database Admin Engineer - US

Mark43•Boston, MA

3d•$140,000 - $180,000•Remote

About The Position

Mark43’s mission is to empower communities and their governments with new technologies that improve the safety and quality of life for all. We build powerful, scalable, and elegant software that sets a new standard for the tools upon which our first responders rely. Our users are diverse, and we are therefore committed to embracing diversity of thought and experience within our team. We’re seeking an experienced and innovative Database Administrator who has managed databases at scale. Come and help build the next generation of cloud-based public safety software. As a senior member of the Mark43 team, you’ll take ownership of our database infrastructure, and become a knowledge resource that your teammates can trust and rely on. You’ll be responsible for ensuring the stability, performance and monitoring of our production databases. We’ll rely on your database knowledge to help our engineers write performant and scalable queries.

Requirements

At least 7 years of professional experience administering MySQL or similar databases in production
Comfortable working in the Cloud
Embrace Infrastructure as Code (Terraform)
Deep understanding of databases, automated testing, and agile methodologies
Deep experience designing and building out infrastructure for complex cloud-based software applications, preferably hosted in AWS
Commitment to providing support for more junior members of the team and developing cooperative working relationships
Leaning in to contribute to the company outside your role - our engineers have written blog posts, attended events, and helped grow our team
Humble, open, and curious. You recognize that no one is perfect and you will be wrong, and you’re excited about listening and learning being a big part of your job.
Attentive, active listeners. You’re interested in what others have to say and illustrate your interest with your actions.
Resilience. You do not shy away from challenging work and you proactively help your team solve problems.
Enthusiastic collaborators. You understand that the best outcomes are achieved through shared ownership, and seek to spread knowledge and expand participation rather than restrict it.
Comfortable with uncertainty. You know that sometimes problems and situations can’t be simplified or fully understood, and are at ease working within this type of haziness.
Passionate about personal growth. You view mistakes as opportunities for learning, and want to grow as a designer, colleague, and person.
Eager to help others. You look for ways to provide support for more junior members of the team and develop cooperative working relationships

Nice To Haves

Experience building and sustaining AWS RDS and Aurora or Azure Databases is preferred
Knowledge of or prior experience with microservices architecture

Responsibilities

Ensured our databases were properly monitored and alerted, improving our ability to identify and respond to issues before they impacted customers
Reviewed and optimized MySQL configurations to improve the performance, reliability, and scalability of our production environments
Identified problematic queries and used execution plans, indexing strategies, and other techniques to improve their performance
Partnered with engineers to improve database schemas, indexes, and query patterns as new features and services were developed
Investigated a production database issue, identified the underlying cause, and implemented a longer-term fix to prevent it from recurring
Automated routine database maintenance and operational work, reducing manual effort and making our systems easier to manage at scale
Reviewed capacity and performance trends to anticipate future scaling needs and identify opportunities for infrastructure improvements
Planned and executed database upgrades, migrations, and configuration changes while minimizing risk and customer impact
Strengthened our backup, recovery, and disaster recovery processes and validated that critical data could be restored when needed
Improved database documentation and operational runbooks, making it easier for engineers to troubleshoot issues and safely work with our data infrastructure