Sr. Database Engineer

Starz Entertainment • Greenwood Village, CO

9d

About The Position

STARZ is seeking an experienced Sr. Database Engineer to design, build, and support the data infrastructure powering its applications and services. The role combines traditional on-premises database administration with cloud-native data architecture across relational and non-relational platforms. The engineer will advise development teams on data-layer choices for new services and maintain the performance, security, and resiliency of existing systems.

The position manages database technologies across AWS, on-premises SQL Server and Oracle environments, and Snowflake. It also develops architecture standards and automation, supports security and compliance controls, participates in database incident on-call rotation, documents data architecture and operational procedures, and collaborates on migrations, integrations, and modernization initiatives. The role includes periodic evidence gathering and reviews supporting SOX IT general control objectives.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, or a related field, or equivalent professional experience.
• Strong experience with AWS-managed data services, including several of DynamoDB, DocumentDB, RDS (MySQL, PostgreSQL, or SQL Server), OpenSearch/Elasticsearch, and ElastiCache.
• Hands-on experience administering SQL Server and Oracle databases in highly available on-premises environments using AOAG SQL Clusters and Oracle DataGuard.
• Hands-on experience with Snowflake administration.
• Strong understanding of relational database design, normalization, indexing strategies, and query optimization.
• Working knowledge of NoSQL and search-engine data modeling concepts, including key-value, document, and search-index patterns.
• Strong experience advising development teams on data architecture decisions and trade-offs.
• Proficiency with SQL, PowerShell, and Bash scripting.
• Solid experience with Terraform for provisioning cloud data resources.
• Understanding of data security, access control, and compliance principles as they apply to database environments.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills, including explaining technical concepts to technical and non-technical stakeholders.

Nice To Haves

• AWS certifications relevant to data or database services, such as AWS Certified Database, AWS Specialty, or AWS Certified Solutions Architect.
• Experience with CI/CD pipelines for database schema changes and deployments.
• Experience developing Ansible playbooks for database maintenance operations.
• Experience supporting hybrid architectures that bridge legacy on-premises systems with cloud-native services.

Responsibilities

• Partner with software engineering teams during service design to recommend data stores and architectures based on access patterns, consistency requirements, scalability, and cost.
• Design, deploy, and manage AWS data layers covering relational, non-relational, search, and caching technologies.
• Administer, tune, and support on-premises SQL Server and Oracle databases, including backup and recovery, high availability, performance tuning, patching, and capacity planning.
• Administer Snowflake environments, enforce security controls, develop zero-copy clone pipelines, and govern costs.
• Develop and enforce data architecture standards, naming conventions, and best practices across on-premises and cloud environments.
• Monitor database health and performance, and proactively resolve bottlenecks, replication issues, and capacity constraints.
• Implement and maintain data security controls, including encryption at rest and in transit, access management, and compliance with internal and regulatory data-handling requirements.
• Build and maintain cloud database automation for provisioning using IaC, monitoring, backup, and maintenance.
• Participate in an on-call rotation for database-related incidents.
• Document database architecture, data flows, and operational runbooks.
• Collaborate across business units on data migrations, integrations, and modernization initiatives.
• Identify process improvements, including reducing manual tasks and human error through automation.
• Perform periodic evidence gathering and reviews supporting SOX IT general control objectives.
• Advise development teams on data architecture decisions, including SQL versus NoSQL trade-offs, caching strategies, and search indexing.
• Support reliable, secure, and performant on-premises and cloud database environments, and develop supportable automation pipelines.

Benefits

• Medical, dental, and vision insurance.
• 401(k) retirement plan with company match.
• Paid company holidays.
• Accrued vacation time, with accrual rates scaling and capped based on tenure.
• 80 hours of front-loaded sick leave each year.
• 5 days of front-loaded wellness leave each year.
• Discretionary annual bonus; target percentage depends on role level and payout is not guaranteed.
• Merit increase.
• Tuition reimbursement up to a graduate degree.

What This Job Offers

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