Staff Database Platform Engineer

Demandbase • San Francisco, CA

8d

About The Position

As a Staff Database Platform Engineer, you will design, build, and evolve scalable database platforms that power Demandbase’s cloud-native applications. You will play a key role in defining the future of database reliability by embedding automation, observability, and compliance into how teams provision, operate, and scale databases across AWS environments.
This is a senior individual contributor role with strong technical ownership and cross-team influence. You will provide leadership to a global DBRE organization, partner closely with product and platform teams, and modernize legacy database systems while enabling a shift toward service-owned, self-service models.

Requirements

• 10+ years of experience in database reliability engineering, platform engineering, or cloud infrastructure roles.
• Strong expertise in Infrastructure-as-Code and automation tools such as Terraform, Helm, GitLab CI/CD, and Kubernetes Operators.
• Hands-on experience with cloud-managed relational databases (PostgreSQL/MySQL on RDS/Aurora) and cloud-native databases (DynamoDB).
• Deep knowledge of performance tuning, query optimization, indexing strategies, and schema design.
• Experience modernizing and migrating legacy databases into scalable, fit-for-purpose systems in partnership with data engineering teams.
• Strong Linux fundamentals and scripting experience (Python, Shell).
• Hands-on experience with observability and monitoring stacks (Prometheus, Grafana, Datadog, OpenSearch, or similar).
• Demonstrated ability to mentor DBREs/DBAs and influence engineering culture toward automation and service ownership.
• Excellent communication skills and ability to collaborate effectively across product, platform, DBRE, and data teams.

Responsibilities

• Design and implement self-service database platforms that enable provisioning, scaling, and secure operations across AWS (RDS, Aurora, DynamoDB) and other cloud-native stores.
• Develop Infrastructure-as-Code solutions (Terraform, Helm, GitLab CI/CD, Kubernetes Operators) to eliminate manual database operations and improve reliability.
• Establish architectural standards and best practices for service-level databases in microservices environments (Postgres, MySQL, DynamoDB, etc.).
• Evaluate and guide database architecture decisions for analytical and ETL workloads, balancing performance, scalability, and cost across technologies (RDS/Aurora, BigQuery, Iceberg, and other cloud-native solutions).
• Build and maintain observability frameworks (Prometheus, Grafana, Datadog, OpenSearch) to ensure database health and operational excellence at scale.
• Enhance system reliability through proactive monitoring, performance tuning, automation, and documentation.
• Define and drive the technical roadmap for database platform modernization aligned with broader engineering strategy.
• Lead initiatives to reduce operational risk, cost, and complexity across legacy and monolithic database systems.
• Guide architectural transitions from shared monolithic databases to decentralized, service-owned database models.
• Partner with cross-functional stakeholders to ensure database architecture supports product scalability and business growth.
• Balance innovation with operational stability to maintain high availability for mission-critical systems.
• Collaborate with product and platform teams on schema design, query optimization, and database best practices.
• Provide tooling, documentation, and onboarding frameworks that empower engineering teams to safely manage their own databases.
• Mentor DBREs in evolving from traditional DBA practices toward platform engineering and automation-first approaches.
• Participate in incident response and postmortems, driving continuous improvement across database operations.
• Foster a culture of shift-left ownership, reliability engineering, and engineering excellence.

Benefits

• Our benefits include options for up to 100% paid Medical and Vision premiums for employees, a flexible PTO policy, paid holidays, and access to mental health and wellness resources.
• We also provide a 401(k) with pre-tax, after tax, and roth options, as well as short-term/long-term disability, life insurance, and other great benefits.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Mid Level
• Education Level: No Education Listed
• Number of Employees: 101-250 employees