Senior Platform Engineer - Database Systems
About The Position
As a Senior Platform Engineer, you'll play a key role in designing and maintaining Quizlet's database infrastructure, ensuring our systems remain performant, scalable, and resilient as the platform grows. You'll bring deep technical expertise to optimize query performance, automate operations, and guide best practices for reliability and observability across Quizlet's data stack. This is an onsite position in our San Francisco office, with a minimum of three days per week onsite: Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday.
Requirements
- 5+ years of experience in database engineering or platform infrastructure
- Hands-on experience managing MySQL (PlanetScale preferred), Cloud Spanner, or BigQuery in production
- Strong background in performance tuning, query optimization, and high-availability design
- Programming proficiency in Go or Python for automation and tooling
- Familiarity with Kubernetes (GKE) and Terraform (IaC)
- Solid understanding of caching systems like Redis or Memcached
- Excellent problem-solving skills and the ability to collaborate across teams
Responsibilities
- Design, implement, and maintain large-scale database systems across Cloud Spanner, PlanetScale MySQL, and BigQuery
- Improve system reliability and performance through automation, observability, and query optimization
- Collaborate with product and infrastructure teams to ensure database architecture supports scalability and uptime targets
- Build tooling and monitoring dashboards in Datadog to detect, alert, and remediate performance issues
- Contribute to platform standards for caching, indexing, and connection management
- Participate in on-call rotations and drive post-incident improvements
Benefits
- Total compensation for this role is market competitive, including a starting base salary of $192,500 - $231,600, depending on location and experience, as well as company stock options
- Collaborate with your manager and team to create a healthy work-life balance
- 20 vacation days that we expect you to take!
- Competitive health, dental, and vision insurance (100% employee and 75% dependent PPO, Dental, VSP Choice)
- Employer-sponsored 401(k) plan with company match
- Access to LinkedIn Learning and other resources to support professional growth
- Paid Family Leave, FSA, HSA, Commuter benefits, and Wellness benefits
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What This Job Offers
Job Type
Full-time
Career Level
Senior
Industry
Educational Services
Education Level
No Education Listed
Number of Employees
251-500 employees
