Staff Database Engineer
About The Position
Solvd Inc. is a rapidly growing AI-native consulting and technology services firm delivering enterprise transformation across cloud, data, software engineering, and artificial intelligence. We work with industry-leading organizations to design, build, and operationalize technology solutions that drive measurable business outcomes. Following the acquisition of Tooploox, a premier AI and product development company, Solvd now offers true end-to-end delivery—from strategic advisory and solution design to custom AI development and enterprise-scale implementation. Our capability centers combine deep technical expertise, proven delivery methodologies, and sector-specific knowledge to address complex business challenges quickly and effectively. Solvd is migrating a Tier-1 US payments platform from a single AWS region to a multi-region architecture in three phases (pilot light by EOY 2026, warm standby by EOY 2027, full active-active by EOY 2028). The data layer spans Aurora MySQL, Cassandra, ElastiCache (Redis / Valkey), DynamoDB, DocumentDB, OpenSearch, and Neptune. We're hiring multiple Database Engineers to implement the per-engine replication, failover, and operational tooling for this program. You'll work under the Principal Database Architect and partner with the client's data and SRE teams.
Requirements
- 8+ years in production database engineering on AWS, with hands-on responsibility for at least one of: payments, banking, brokerage, or comparable financial-services workloads.
- Deep production experience with DynamoDB and at least two of: Aurora MySQL, Cassandra, ElastiCache (Redis or Valkey), DocumentDB, Neptune. Working knowledge of at least two more.
- Practical experience with cross-region replication in production using DynamoDB Global Tables: you've configured and operated multi-region DynamoDB deployments and handled failure scenarios such as replication conflicts, regional outages, replication delays, and consistency or version-skew issues.
- Strong Terraform (or CDK). You can build a multi-region module from scratch and explain the trade-offs.
- Comfort with CDC tooling (DMS, DDB Streams, Kafka Connect, or Debezium) and the operational gotchas (schema drift, ordering guarantees, replay).
- Linux, networking fundamentals (VPC, Transit Gateway, peering, DNS), and IAM / KMS proficiency.
- Solid written communication and ability to operate in a regulated client environment.
Nice To Haves
- Cassandra multi-DC operations experience at scale (nodetool workflows, repair strategy, tombstone management, cross-region anti-entropy).
- AWS MSK or Kafka MirrorMaker 2 experience for cross-region event replication.
- Experience with Datadog Database Monitoring and custom CloudWatch metrics.
- AWS Database Specialty or Solutions Architect Associate / Professional certifications.
Responsibilities
- Implement and operate cross-region replication using Amazon DynamoDB Global Tables, ensuring reliable multi-region data replication, high availability, consistency, and disaster recovery.
- Codify everything in Terraform (or CDK).
- Build the observability layer for replication health: lag metrics, consistency checks, alarm thresholds, and runbook automation. Datadog is the primary observability stack; CloudWatch is the baseline.
- Author and execute failover and failback runbooks. Run game-days using AWS Fault Injection Service. Measure and report against RTO and RPO targets.
- Implement KMS cross-account replication, IAM service principals for replication roles, and the secrets and parameter strategy for region-local dependencies.
- Support data extraction from the monolith into microservices: build CDC pipelines (DMS, DynamoDB Streams, Kafka Connect, Debezium), validate data integrity, and own the cutover sequence for individual extractions.
- Pair with application engineers on connection-string abstraction, retry and idempotency patterns, and graceful degradation during region failover.
- Write design docs and runbooks the client team can take over after the engagement.
Benefits
- Shape real-world AI-driven projects across key industries, working with clients from startup innovation to enterprise transformation.
- Be part of a global team with equal opportunities for collaboration across continents and cultures.
- Thrive in an inclusive environment that prioritizes continuous learning, innovation, and ethical AI standards.
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What This Job Offers
Job Type
Full-time
Career Level
Senior
Education Level
No Education Listed
