Lead PostgreSQL Database Administrator

Green Dot • Los Angeles, CA

4d • Hybrid

About The Position

Green Dot is hiring a hands-on senior PostgreSQL engineering professional to own the design, availability, performance, and security of its production PostgreSQL estate hosted in Microsoft Azure. The environment includes Azure Database for PostgreSQL flexible server and self-managed PostgreSQL on Azure virtual machines running Red Hat Enterprise Linux, CentOS Stream, and Windows Server. This is an individual-contributor role rather than a supervisory position, and the DBA serves as the final escalation point for database incidents and architect of high-availability and disaster-recovery designs, including active-passive and active-active topologies. The role also requires keeping current with PostgreSQL 17, 18, and the upcoming 19 release.

The position is classified as structured hybrid: three days per week in the office, with flexibility to work remotely on the remaining days. On-site expectations may change to support business needs, with advance communication. Candidates must currently reside in West Los Angeles, California. The position is listed as contractor, and its targeted full-time base salary is $109,300–$163,900 per year. Green Dot does not offer visa sponsorship; applicants must be authorized to work in the United States without current or future sponsorship.

The successful candidate will design, administer, secure, monitor, tune, and automate PostgreSQL across Azure managed services and self-managed Linux and Windows deployments. They will lead availability, disaster recovery, replication, backup and restore, migrations, upgrades, and performance engineering; respond to critical incidents; maintain operational documentation and infrastructure as code; and mentor junior DBAs and developers on PostgreSQL practices.

Requirements

• At least 7 years administering PostgreSQL in production, including at least 3 years with PostgreSQL 14 or later.
• At least 3 years hosting and operating PostgreSQL in Microsoft Azure, including at least 2 years on Azure Database for PostgreSQL flexible server; experience limited to on-premises or another cloud is not accepted, and Azure Single Server experience does not meet the stated flexible-server requirement.
• Demonstrated ownership of a production active-passive high-availability cluster, including at least one real, non-test failover.
• Demonstrated design or operation of a production active-active or bi-directional replication topology, with a clear explanation of conflict avoidance or resolution.
• Production administration of PostgreSQL on both Linux (RHEL or CentOS) and Windows Server.
• Experience with Azure Database for PostgreSQL flexible-server HA modes, read replicas, point-in-time recovery and geo-restore, major-version upgrades, server parameters, extension allow-lists, PgBouncer, and maintenance windows.
• Experience with Azure database networking, including VNet integration, private endpoints, private DNS, and network security groups.
• Experience with Microsoft Entra ID authentication for PostgreSQL and managed identities.
• Experience with Azure Monitor, Log Analytics and KQL, and Azure Advisor for PostgreSQL.
• Infrastructure-as-code experience for Azure using Terraform or Bicep, along with Azure CLI and PowerShell.
• Experience with PostgreSQL streaming replication, replication slots, logical replication publications and subscriptions, and pglogical.
• Experience with Patroni or an equivalent cluster manager, etcd or Consul, and HAProxy or PgBouncer.
• Experience with pgBackRest or Barman, WAL archiving to object storage, and incremental backups.
• Deep query-tuning experience, including execution plans, index design, statistics, partitioning, autovacuum tuning, and bloat management.
• Experience with major-version upgrades using pg_upgrade, logical replication, and pg_createsubscriber.
• Working knowledge of PostgreSQL 18 features, including asynchronous I/O, UUIDv7, virtual generated columns, temporal constraints, OAuth, and data checksums enabled by default, and awareness of PostgreSQL 19 changes.
• RHEL or CentOS experience with systemd, SELinux, LVM, PGDG package management, and Bash scripting.
• Windows Server experience with service management, NTFS permissions, PowerShell scripting, and PostgreSQL installation and upgrade behavior.
• Experience with Git-based workflows, CI/CD pipelines, and configuration management.
• Professional experience leading Sev-1 incident response and writing post-mortems.
• Clear written communication skills for runbooks, architecture decision records, and change requests understandable to non-DBAs.
• Ability to participate in a 24x7 on-call rotation.
• Ability to work in the United States without current or future visa sponsorship.
• Must currently reside in West Los Angeles, California.

Nice To Haves

• Microsoft Certified: Azure Database Administrator Associate (DP-300) or Azure Solutions Architect Expert (AZ-305).
• Red Hat Certified System Administrator (RHCSA) or equivalent Linux certification.
• Hands-on testing of PostgreSQL 19 betas or release candidates, especially REPACK CONCURRENTLY, parallel autovacuum, WAIT FOR LSN, and sequence replication.
• Experience with Azure Database for PostgreSQL elastic clusters (Citus-based sharding) or Citus on self-managed clusters.
• Experience with EDB Postgres Distributed, pgEdge, or another commercial multi-master product, and an understanding of what native tooling can and cannot replace.
• Experience with Azure Database Migration Service for online migrations from Oracle, SQL Server, or other PostgreSQL sources.
• Experience operating pgvector, pg_diskann, or Apache AGE on flexible server for AI or graph workloads.
• Kubernetes-hosted PostgreSQL on AKS using CloudNativePG, Crunchy Postgres Operator, or Zalando Postgres Operator.
• Contributions to the PostgreSQL community, such as patches, extensions, conference talks, or documentation.
• Familiarity with Oracle, SQL Server, or MySQL for cross-platform migration work.
• Security and compliance experience involving SOC 2, HIPAA, PCI DSS, or FedRAMP database-control audits.

Responsibilities

• Design, deploy, and operate active-passive high availability for Azure Database for PostgreSQL flexible server, including zone-redundant or same-zone configurations, failover testing, and appropriately sized replication slots and WAL senders.
• Build and operate active-passive PostgreSQL clusters on Azure virtual machines using streaming replication and supported cluster-management and traffic-routing tools.
• Design cross-region disaster recovery using geo-redundant backups and cross-region read replicas, and maintain tested promotion runbooks with defined recovery objectives.
• Preserve logical replication across failovers and operate active-active or bi-directional replication across Azure regions, including conflict avoidance and resolution, DDL propagation, sequence synchronization, and replication monitoring.
• Assess whether active-active architecture is appropriate and recommend a lower-risk active-passive design when it meets requirements.
• Provision and manage Azure Database for PostgreSQL flexible server using Azure portal, CLI, PowerShell, ARM/Bicep, Terraform, and REST APIs.
• Configure Azure database networking, authentication, identities, encryption, compute and storage, connection pooling, upgrades, replicas, backups, maintenance windows, and elastic clusters where appropriate.
• Install, patch, and tune self-managed PostgreSQL on Linux and Windows Azure virtual machines; manage operating-system-specific services, security settings, storage, packages, and maintenance.
• Operate PostgreSQL backup and recovery tooling, WAL archiving, and incremental backups where supported.
• Diagnose and tune database performance using execution plans, PostgreSQL statistics and diagnostic tools, Azure Query Performance Insight, and appropriate indexing, partitioning, statistics, memory, I/O, checkpoint, WAL, and autovacuum settings.
• Manage database bloat and prevent transaction-ID wraparound using suitable maintenance approaches for the PostgreSQL version in use.
• Enforce least-privilege roles, row-level security, secure authentication, TLS and certificate management, encryption at rest, and audit logging; provide audit evidence and respond to CVEs within patching SLAs.
• Build monitoring dashboards and alerts with Azure Monitor, Log Analytics, and appropriate tools for VM-hosted clusters; lead Sev-1 database incidents, write blameless post-mortems, and drive corrective actions to completion.
• Plan and execute migrations to Azure from on-premises environments or other clouds, and lead major-version upgrades with rollback plans and application regression testing.
• Keep database infrastructure in code using tools such as Terraform, Bicep, Ansible, and PowerShell, with CI-tested changes.
• Write and maintain runbooks for failovers, restores, and upgrades; mentor junior DBAs and developers; and review schema changes in pull requests.
• Participate in a 24x7 on-call rotation and produce clear runbooks, architecture decision records, and change requests.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior
• Education Level: No Education Listed