Senior Database Administrator - PostgreSQL

Alter Domus • Carmel-by-the-Sea, CA

6d • Hybrid

About The Position

We are looking for a Senior PostgreSQL Database Administrator to join our Global IT Operations team in Carmel, Indiana. You will be one of the senior technical owners of the PostgreSQL platform that our fund administration and reporting applications run on — responsible for its availability, performance, recoverability and security, and for the standards the rest of the organization builds against. This is a hands-on role with real design authority, not a ticket-queue position.

Requirements

• At least 7 years administering production PostgreSQL, including databases that the business depends on around the clock.
• Deep, hands-on understanding of PostgreSQL internals: MVCC and vacuum behavior, WAL and checkpoints, replication, and query planning.
• Proven experience running PostgreSQL on AWS — RDS and/or Aurora — including instance sizing, parameter groups, monitoring and engine version upgrades.
• A track record of designing and testing high availability and disaster recovery: not only configuring replication, but demonstrating that recovery works.
• Strong query and workload tuning skills you can talk through with concrete examples from your own work.
• Solid Linux administration and scripting in Bash and/or Python.
• Experience working within a formal change management process in a regulated, audited or otherwise controlled environment.
• The ability to explain database risk and trade-offs clearly to non-technical stakeholders and to senior management.
• A bachelor’s degree in computer science or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.
• Fluent English, written and spoken.
• Authorization to work in the United States.

Nice To Haves

• PostgreSQL HA tooling: Patroni, etcd or Consul, HAProxy or Keepalived.
• Microsoft Azure Database for PostgreSQL.
• pgBackRest at scale, including incremental and differential strategies and retention policy design.
• Containerized PostgreSQL on Kubernetes — persistent storage, backups, failover and operational troubleshooting.
• Terraform, Ansible or similar infrastructure-as-code tooling.
• A background in Oracle or SQL Server, and experience migrating from them to PostgreSQL.
• Financial services, fund administration or another regulated industry.

Responsibilities

• Own day-to-day administration of the PostgreSQL estate: provisioning, configuration, monitoring and lifecycle management across cloud and on-premises instances.
• Act as senior escalation point for database incidents. Lead root-cause analysis, drive permanent corrective actions rather than repeat workarounds, and write the post-incident record.
• Plan and execute patching and major-version upgrades with minimal or zero downtime, choosing appropriately between pg_upgrade, logical replication and dump/restore.
• Take database changes through our change management and CAB process with reviewed scripts, tested rollback and clear release documentation.
• Diagnose and resolve performance problems using EXPLAIN / EXPLAIN ANALYZE, pg_stat_statements, wait-event analysis and planner statistics.
• Tune indexing, partitioning, connection pooling (PgBouncer) and workload-specific configuration for our largest and busiest databases.
• Keep bloat and storage growth under control through autovacuum tuning and targeted VACUUM, ANALYZE and REINDEX operations.
• Plan capacity proactively across CPU, memory, IOPS, storage, WAL growth and connection limits, and flag what needs investment before it becomes an incident.
• Build monitoring and alerting that catches problems before users report them, using CloudWatch, Performance Insights, Prometheus/Grafana, pgBadger and PostgreSQL logs.
• Design, operate and prove backup and recovery using pgBackRest, pg_basebackup, logical dumps and cloud snapshots — with automated restore testing, not assumed-good backups.
• Build and operate high availability using streaming and logical replication, and automated failover where the workload justifies it.
• Own the database side of our disaster recovery program: define and document RPO/RTO, configure cross-region replication, and take part in scheduled DR tests including failover and failback.
• Troubleshoot WAL, archiving, replication slots and replication lag, and know what to do when recovery does not go to plan.
• Apply and maintain database security standards: least privilege, role hierarchy, SCRAM authentication, TLS, encryption at rest, auditing and separation of duties.
• Manage roles, privileges and authentication through postgresql.conf and pg_hba.conf, together with cloud-side controls such as security groups, network ACLs and private networking.
• Produce the evidence our internal audit, external auditors and financial-services regulators require — including obligations under DORA for our European entities.
• Keep documentation current and usable: build standards, configuration baselines, backup and recovery procedures, and support runbooks.
• Automate provisioning, patching, backup validation and routine maintenance using Bash, Python and infrastructure-as-code.
• Integrate database changes into CI/CD so schema changes are source-controlled, reviewed and repeatable across environments.
• Review architecture and technical designs from application and engineering teams, and give clear, practical feedback on scalability, resilience, security and supportability.
• Evaluate PostgreSQL extensions and third-party tooling for enterprise use, covering compatibility, security, supportability, licensing and operational impact.
• Mentor other DBAs, run technical reviews, and raise the standard of database practice across the team.
• Take part in a shared on-call rotation for critical systems with [N] other engineers, on a [one week in N] cycle.
• Coordinate with colleagues and vendors across multiple time zones, including occasional planned weekend maintenance windows.

Benefits

• Support for professional accreditations
• Flexible arrangements, generous holidays, plus an additional day off for your birthday!
• Continuous mentoring along your career progression
• Active sports, events and social committees across our offices
• 24/7 support available from our Employee Assistance Program
• The opportunity to invest in our growth and success through our Employee Share Plan
• Plus additional local benefits depending on your location

What This Job Offers

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