Database Engineer - Sr. Consultant level

Visa • Austin, TX

9h • Hybrid

About The Position

Visa’s Technology Organization is a community of problem solvers and innovators reshaping the future of commerce. We operate one of the world’s most sophisticated processing networks, supporting secure transactions at global scale.
Pismo is a cloud‑native financial services company operating as part of Visa. We build and deliver scalable payment and banking services for financial institutions worldwide. Our platforms demand strong correctness, resilience, security, and performance—especially in our data stores and database platforms.
We are looking for a Senior Consultant Database Architect—a senior individual contributor who acts as a technical authority and architectural leader for Pismo’s database and data storage ecosystem.
In this role you will define database architecture and standards across teams, lead work where requirements are ambiguous or evolving, and be accountable for database outcomes end‑to-end: from logical and physical design through implementation, performance, reliability, security, operations, and adoption.
While this is a hands‑on role, your impact will increasingly come from technical direction, design leadership, mentoring, and raising the bar across the organization.

Requirements

• Proven ability to operate with high autonomy, including leading initiatives where the problem is not fully defined.
• Track record of influencing standards across multiple teams and driving adoption through clear communication and technical credibility.
• Strong ownership mindset: accountable for outcomes, not just design artifacts.
• Deep experience designing and operating production database systems at scale (e.g., PostgreSQL/MySQL and/or modern cloud database services. Plus experience with a relevant NoSQL store is a plus).
• Strong foundation in data modeling, schema evolution, indexing, partitioning/sharding, replication, and consistency trade-offs.
• Demonstrated expertise in performance tuning and diagnosing production issues (query plans, lock contention, hotspots, capacity limits).
• Experience designing for multi-region resilience, backup/restore, DR, and safe deployment of schema/data changes.
• Ability to communicate complex technical concepts clearly to engineers, product partners, and leadership.
• Comfort working in multi-functional teams (Product, Security, SRE/Platform, QA, Agile/Scrum).
• Hands-on ability to prototype, review code, and guide implementations in one or more languages (e.g., Java, Go, Python).
• 8+ years of relevant work experience with a Bachelor’s Degree or at least 5 years of experience with an Advanced Degree (e.g. Masters, MBA, JD, MD) or 2 years of work experience with a PhD, OR 11+ years of relevant work experience.

Nice To Haves

• Experience with database platform engineering (golden paths, self-service provisioning, standardized tooling).
• Familiarity with data governance concepts (cataloging, lineage, retention policies) in a regulated environment.
• Experience leading large-scale data migrations or modernization programs.
• Familiarity and experience working with relational and non-relational databases
• Familiarity and experience building database automation
• Familiarity and experience with data concepts such as consistency and idempotency
• Familiarity and experience working with Azure cloud services
• Experience leading teams of technical professionals

Responsibilities

• Database Architecture & Technical Leadership
• End-to-End Ownership (Design to Production to Adoption)
• Reliability, Security & Compliance by Design
• Organizational Impact & Cross-Team Influence
• Mentorship, Culture & Hiring
• External Influence (Optional, Encouraged)
• Partner with product and engineering leaders to translate business requirements into sound data architecture and durable database designs.
• Produce and socialize reference architectures, patterns, and standards that improve consistency across teams.
• Lead and/or review designs for: Relational data modeling (normalization vs denormalization, constraints, consistency models) NoSQL/document modeling (where applicable), access patterns, and data lifecycle strategies High availability / multi-region approaches, replication, and DR planning Performance optimization (indexes, query plans, caching strategies, connection management)
• Establish measurable outcomes and dashboards for database performance, reliability, and operational health.

Benefits

• Visa has a comprehensive benefits package for which this position may be eligible that includes Medical, Dental, Vision, 401 (k), FSA/HSA, Life Insurance, Paid Time Off, and Wellness Program.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Mid Level