Senior PostgreSQL Database Engineer - Active TS/SCI required

Riptide Technology • Washington, DC

2d • $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 subject matter expert will lead the design, implementation, and operation of high-performance PostgreSQL and Oracle Enterprise database infrastructures supporting programs within the Naval Center for Spacecraft Technology. The databases support high-volume, multi-source event data and data fusion, with capabilities transitioning toward modern cloud architectures.

The role combines database administration with engineering future-state data models, developing tracking algorithms, planning data migrations, and deploying resilient cloud and on-premises database ecosystems. It also involves multi-INT data fusion and geolocation tracking, data ingestion and archiving, web services and interface integration, object-based production, systems engineering, documentation, training, configuration management, and infrastructure support.

Requirements

• Bachelor of Science degree in Mathematics, Engineering, or Computer Science.
• 12+ years applying software development methodologies and practices, including structured and object-oriented programming and current software development tools across multiple environments.
• 12+ years of relational database planning, design, development, testing, installation, and maintenance for complex technical software systems, including PostgreSQL, Oracle, SQL Server, and Sybase.
• At least 4 years of proficiency in spatial databases, including 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 capability for ground-based analysis systems, including system information modeling and database design.
• Ability to incorporate system architecture using enterprise design, 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, for low-latency mission-critical use.
• 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 lifecycle.
• U.S. citizenship and an active DoD Top Secret/SCI clearance.
• Equivalent spatial experience of 4+ years may include BigQuery GIS, Amazon Redshift Spatial, Snowflake Geospatial, Oracle Spatial & Graph, Microsoft SQL Server Spatial, MySQL Spatial, Elasticsearch geospatial, MongoDB Geospatial, Apache Sedona (GeoSpark), GeoMesa, or Databricks Mosaic.

Nice To Haves

• 5+ 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 across multidisciplinary engineering teams 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 setups, and cloud PostgreSQL configurations such as AWS RDS/Aurora or Azure Cosmos DB for PostgreSQL.
• Expertise handling large-scale, high-velocity spatiotemporal data, large time-series datasets, and streaming event logs.
• Mastery of 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.

Responsibilities

• Implement, manage, and tune Oracle Enterprise Edition databases, including Oracle 12c, SQL Developer, and 12c Cloud Console; install Oracle Enterprise Linux and Oracle software; and manage workloads on bare-metal servers, RAC, and Exadata.
• Configure and use Oracle Label Security, Real Application Clusters, 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 object models 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, tracker performance, and database alerting and alarming.
• Analyze algorithms, measure performance, monitor long-term trends, 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, schedules, and web-extractor software across hardware suites, IC/DoD clouds, and commercial government clouds such as AWS; lead engineering efforts to transition capabilities to evolving cloud environments.
• Implement long-term online archives indexing multi-domain positions and metadata; integrate open-source schedule data and build queryable web services for retrieving historical archives.
• Provide Echelon 2 operations and maintenance support for existing tactical and strategic data feeds.
• Design and engineer UI prototypes and supporting data-access web services for integration with the Ozone Widget Framework or equivalent presentation frameworks.
• Implement object-based production that delivers aggregated real-world object profiles in collaborative regional and worldwide services; develop object aggregation algorithms for R&D.
• Analyze system functionality, survivability, and performance; address 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 to maintain baseline control.
• Support and enhance network technology implementations, perform routine equipment maintenance, manage system access through account-creation scripts, and connect systems to LANs and WANs using thin-client architectures.

Benefits

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

What This Job Offers

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