Senior PostgreSQL Database Engineer - Active TS/SCI required

Riptide Technology • Washington, DC

14h • Hybrid

About The Position

Riptide Technology is seeking a Senior Database Design Engineer (Level V) to support research and development, data analysis, and cloud migration initiatives in a hybrid role at the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, D.C. The position serves as a subject matter expert leading the design, implementation, and operation of high-performance PostgreSQL and Oracle Enterprise database infrastructure for Naval Center for Spacecraft Technology programs. The role focuses on future-state data models, tracking algorithms, data migration strategies, and resilient cloud and on-premises database ecosystems, in addition to database administration.

The engineer will modernize Oracle and PostgreSQL environments; support data fusion and geolocation tracking across GEOINT, SIGINT, and OSINT; build data ingestion, archival, and query services; and transition existing capabilities to IC, DoD, or commercial government cloud environments. The role also includes prototyping user interfaces and web services for the Ozone Widget Framework or equivalent, implementing object-based production services, supporting system engineering and operations, maintaining configuration baselines, and preparing training materials and presentations.

The position requires an active DoD Top Secret/SCI clearance and U.S. citizenship. Compensation is $200,000–$225,000 per year. The benefits listed include six weeks of PTO, immediately vested 401(k) with a company contribution equal to 10% of salary, paid training, and company-paid dental, vision, short- and long-term disability, and life insurance.

Requirements

• Bachelor of Science degree in Mathematics, Engineering, or Computer Science.
• 12 or more years applying software development methodologies and practices, including structured and object-oriented programming and development tools across multiple environments.
• 12 or more years of relational database planning, design, development, testing, installation, and maintenance for complex technical software systems; experience may include PostgreSQL, Oracle, SQL Server, or Sybase.
• At least 4 years of proficiency with spatial databases, such as PostGIS or equivalent relational spatial extensions.
• Experience across the software development lifecycle for complex software systems supporting Multi-INT processing, from planning and design through installation and maintenance.
• Enterprise computing and architecture design capabilities for ground-based analysis systems, including information modeling and database design.
• Ability to incorporate enterprise system architecture, business process modeling, workflow implementation, and web-based or semantics-based development methodologies.
• Experience designing and implementing scalable databases to ingest, integrate, and synthesize disparate, multi-source data feeds and Multi-INT products, including structured streams, high-volume ingestion, raw telemetry, and imagery, for low-latency mission-critical use.
• Knowledge of terrestrial and space surveillance methodologies and sensor technologies and capabilities, and ability to envision new operational modes through evolutionary development.
• Experience producing technical and user documentation, providing training and system orientation, and consulting with development teams throughout the software development life cycle.
• U.S. citizenship and an active DoD Top Secret/SCI clearance or equivalent.
• Equivalent spatial technology experience may include cloud data warehouses such as BigQuery GIS, Amazon Redshift Spatial, or Snowflake Geospatial; relational technologies such as Oracle Spatial & Graph, Microsoft SQL Server Spatial, or MySQL Spatial; Elasticsearch or MongoDB geospatial capabilities; or frameworks such as Apache Sedona, GeoMesa, and Databricks Mosaic.

Nice To Haves

• Five or more years of hands-on PostgreSQL administration or development experience.
• PostgreSQL Professional Certification or AWS/Azure Cloud Database Certification; equivalent production experience is also valued.
• Experience collaborating in multidisciplinary engineering environments and interfacing with infrastructure, security, application development, functional leads, and product or operational managers.
• Experience designing, deploying, and managing multi-node PostgreSQL clusters, high-availability setups, and cloud PostgreSQL configurations such as AWS RDS/Aurora or Azure Cosmos DB for PostgreSQL.
• Expertise with large-scale, high-velocity spatiotemporal data, time-series datasets, and streaming event logs.
• Expertise in high-volume bulk loading, parallel data ingestion, and ETL/ELT optimization.
• Deep understanding of enterprise security models, including RBAC, RLS, multilevel secure access controls, and data security labeling and classification schemas.
• Strong database performance-tuning, query-optimization, and profiling skills using pgBench, EXPLAIN ANALYZE, Dynatrace, or native PostgreSQL statistics.

Responsibilities

• Design, implement, operate, administer, and tune high-performance PostgreSQL and Oracle Enterprise database infrastructures.
• Install and manage Oracle Enterprise Edition, Oracle Enterprise Linux, Oracle software, and database workloads across bare-metal servers, RAC, and Exadata.
• Configure and use Oracle Label Security, RAC, and Oracle Partitioning through complex SQL programming.
• Research and establish migration paths for legacy Oracle data stores to IC and DoD cloud data layers.
• Define and implement complex data object models, including Unified Object Model and Generalized Entity Model, in cloud environments.
• Support virtualized and bare-metal systems running Red Hat Linux, Oracle Enterprise Linux, CentOS, and limited Windows environments.
• Develop, modify, and enhance data-fusion and geographic-tracking algorithms for GEOINT, SIGINT, and OSINT data.
• Optimize track correlation, tracking algorithms, and database-level alerting and alarming.
• Analyze algorithms, measure performance, trend active data over time, and report anomalies to the Government lead.
• Research and develop automated electronic-emission pattern data-tagging methodologies.
• Build and maintain architectures hosting maritime data feeds, schedule information, and web-extractor software across hardware and cloud environments.
• Lead systems engineering efforts to transition existing capabilities into evolving cloud ecosystems.
• Implement long-term online data archives indexing multi-domain positions and metadata; integrate open-source schedule data and build queryable web services for historical archives.
• Provide Echelon 2 operations and maintenance support for tactical and strategic data feeds.
• Design and engineer UI prototypes and data-access web services for integration with the Ozone Widget Framework or equivalent.
• Implement object-based production services for aggregated real-world object profiles and develop object-aggregation algorithms for R&D.
• Analyze system functionality, survivability, and performance; identify and address design deficiencies through engineering analyses and quick-reaction studies.
• Prepare training documentation and instruct operators on data-analysis products; support program deliveries, demonstrations, and customer presentations.
• Participate in system capability reviews, modify application codebases, and archive software modifications in a configuration-management database.
• Support and enhance network technology, perform routine equipment maintenance, manage system access using account-creation scripts, and connect systems to LANs and WANs using thin-client architectures.

Benefits

• Six weeks of PTO.
• Immediately fully vested 401(k).
• Company 401(k) contribution equal to 10% of salary.
• Paid training.
• Company-paid dental insurance.
• Company-paid vision insurance.
• Company-paid short-term disability insurance.
• Company-paid long-term disability insurance.
• Company-paid life insurance.

What This Job Offers

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