Senior Database Engineer
PayPal•San Jose, CA
•$117,500 - $191,950•Hybrid
About The Position
This job ensures the reliability, scalability, and performance of PayPal’s global data platforms. This role leads infrastructure transformations, architects petabyte-scale operational systems, and optimizes mission-critical OLTP and analytics environments. The engineer designs, implements, automates, and manages next-generation cloud-native database systems across multi-cloud platforms while driving operational excellence, automation, and AI-driven optimization. Collaboration with cross-functional data and product teams is essential to support PayPal’s data-driven innovation and platform resilience.
Requirements
- 3+ years relevant experience and a Bachelor’s degree OR Any equivalent combination of education and experience.
- Proficiency in BigTable, Oracle, MySQL/MariaDB, Hadoop, Spark, Kafka, BigQuery, and Kubernetes.
- Expertise with Terraform, Ansible, Puppet, and GitOps automation frameworks.
- Strong programming in Python and SQL; familiarity with Bash, Java, or Scala.
- Experience with AWS, GCP, and Azure environments.
- Linux system administration and distributed systems troubleshooting skills.
- Deep understanding of observability tools (Grafana, Datadog, ELK).
- Strong focus on system reliability, performance tuning, and automation.
Nice To Haves
- Experience with Infrastructure as Code and automation technologies such as Terraform, AWS CloudFormation, AWS CLI, Ansible, or Puppet.
- Strong programming and scripting skills using technologies such as Python, Java, Bash, AWS Lambda, and API Gateway.
- Strong knowledge of relational and non-relational database architecture, design, performance, availability, and operations.
- Hands-on experience with technologies such as AWS Aurora MySQL, MySQL, DynamoDB, DocumentDB, Cassandra, Redis/ElastiCache, or Elasticsearch/OpenSearch.
- Experience operating databases in large-scale, highly available AWS production environments.
- Strong communication and collaboration skills with the ability to explain technical concepts to both technical and non-technical audiences.
- AWS Solutions Architect or equivalent AWS certification preferred.
Responsibilities
- Design, deploy, and manage high-performance database clusters (BigTable, Oracle, MySQL, Cloud SQL).
- Architect multi-cloud database solutions across AWS, GCP, and Azure.
- Build Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC) frameworks using Terraform, Ansible, Puppet, and Packer.
- Optimize databases through indexing, partitioning, tuning, and query improvements.
- Automate schema deployment and management using GitOps and CI/CD workflows.
- Lead incident response and implement self-healing and failover strategies.
- Develop observability and alerting systems using Grafana, Datadog, and Prometheus.
- Create Python-based automation and AI-driven optimization tools for database operations.
- Ensure database security, compliance, and documentation best practices.
- Collaborate with engineers, data scientists, and ML teams to support analytics and platform goals.
Benefits
- Generous paid time off
- Healthcare coverage for you and your family
- Resources to create financial security
- Support your mental health
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What This Job Offers
Job Type
Full-time
Career Level
Senior
