Senior PostgreSQL Database Engineer - Active TS/SCI required

Riptide Technology • Washington, DC

5d • $200,000 - $225,000 • 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 role serves as a subject matter expert leading the design, implementation, and operation of high-performance PostgreSQL and Oracle Enterprise database infrastructures supporting programs within the Naval Center for Spacecraft Technology. The database environment processes large volumes of multi-source event data, supports data fusion, and is transitioning toward modern cloud architectures.

The engineer will develop future-state data models, tracking algorithms, and data migration strategies, and deploy resilient cloud and on-premises database ecosystems. The position combines database engineering and administration with software development, multi-INT data fusion, systems engineering, data ingestion and archiving, user-interface integration, and lifecycle support. The role requires an active DoD Top Secret/SCI clearance and U.S. citizenship.

Requirements

• B.S. degree in Mathematics, Engineering, or Computer Science.
• Meet DoD 8570/8140 Information Assurance Technical (IAT) Level II requirements.
• 12 or more years applying software development methodologies and practices, including structured and object-oriented programming and current software development tools across multiple environments.
• 12 or more years in relational database planning, design, development, testing, installation, and maintenance for complex technical software systems, including PostgreSQL, Oracle, SQL Server, or Sybase.
• At least 4 years of strong proficiency in spatial databases, including PostGIS or an equivalent relational spatial extension.
• Full-spectrum software-development skills for complex systems, including Multi-INT processing from planning and design through installation and maintenance.
• Enterprise computing and architecture design capabilities for ground-based analysis systems, including system 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 that ingest, integrate, and synthesize disparate multi-source data feeds and Multi-INT fusion products, including structured streams, high-volume ingestion, raw telemetry, and imagery in low-latency environments.
• Knowledge of terrestrial and space surveillance methodologies and sensor technologies and capabilities, and ability to envision new operating modes through evolutionary development.
• Experience producing technical and user documentation, providing training and system orientation, and consulting with related development teams throughout the software development life cycle.
• U.S. citizenship and an active DoD Top Secret/SCI clearance.

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 operations managers.
• Experience designing, deploying, and managing multi-node PostgreSQL clusters, high-availability configurations, and cloud PostgreSQL services such as AWS RDS/Aurora or Azure Cosmos DB for PostgreSQL.
• Expertise with large-scale, high-velocity datasets, including geospatial and spatiotemporal architectures, large 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, multi-level 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.
• Four or more years with equivalent spatial technologies, including BigQuery GIS, Amazon Redshift Spatial, Snowflake Geospatial, Oracle Spatial & Graph, Microsoft SQL Server Spatial, MySQL Spatial, Elasticsearch geo features, MongoDB Geospatial, Apache Sedona, GeoMesa, or Databricks Mosaic.

Responsibilities

• Implement, manage, and tune Oracle Enterprise Edition RDBMS, including Oracle 12c, SQL Developer, and 12c Cloud Console.
• Install Oracle Enterprise Linux and Oracle software, and manage workloads on bare-metal servers, Real Application Clusters (RAC), and Exadata servers.
• Configure and use Oracle Label Security, RAC, and Oracle Partitioning through complex SQL programming.
• Research and establish migration paths for legacy Oracle databases to IC and DoD cloud data layers.
• Define and implement complex cloud object models, including Unified Object Model and Generalized Entity Model.
• 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 algorithm performance, and database-level alerting and alarming.
• Analyze algorithms, measure performance, perform long-term trending, and detect, document, 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 suites, IC/DoD clouds, and commercial government clouds such as AWS.
• Lead systems engineering efforts to transition existing capabilities into evolving cloud ecosystems.
• Implement long-term online data archives that index multi-domain positions and metadata, and integrate open-source schedule data and queryable web services for retrieving historical archives.
• Provide Echelon 2 operations and maintenance support for existing tactical and strategic data feeds.
• Design and engineer user-interface prototypes and data-access web services for integration with the Ozone Widget Framework or equivalent presentation frameworks.
• Implement Object-Based Production and Object Management as a Service approaches for collaborative regional and worldwide services delivering aggregated real-world object profiles.
• Develop advanced object-aggregation algorithms to support research and development.
• Analyze system functionality, survivability, and performance; identify critical design deficiencies; and conduct short-term 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 implementations, perform routine equipment maintenance, manage system access through account-creation scripts, and connect to LANs and WANs using thin-client architectures.

Benefits

• Six weeks of PTO.
• Immediately fully vested 401(k).
• Company contribution equal to 10% of salary.
• Paid training.
• 100% company-paid dental and vision insurance.
• Company-paid short- and long-term disability insurance.
• Company-paid life insurance.

What This Job Offers

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