Staff/Principal Database Engineer (SaaS)

TL;DR

Staff/Principal Database Engineer (SaaS): Designing and optimizing high-scale data infrastructure for a rapidly growing SaaS platform with an accent on database internals, sharding, and high availability. Focus on driving architectural decisions, mentoring senior engineering teams, and implementing scalable storage strategies to support next-gen AI-driven features.

Location: Must be based in or able to commute to Oakland, California (3 days/week onsite)

Salary: $228,000–$340,000

Company

hirify.global is a high-growth SaaS company providing cutting-edge ediscovery software for law firms and government agencies to manage large-scale evidence investigations.

What you will do

• Design and maintain the database and storage strategy, including caching layers and analytics stores.
• Lead scalability efforts through sharding, logical partitioning, and multi-region replication.
• Analyze and tune database internals such as memory management, disk I/O, and query execution.
• Direct database migration strategies to ensure minimal downtime and high availability.
• Implement observability tooling to proactively monitor health and performance bottlenecks.
• Provide technical guidance and mentorship to senior engineers across the organization.

Requirements

• 10+ years of software engineering experience, including 6+ years in database engineering.
• Deep understanding of RDBMS storage engines and locking mechanisms (Postgres or MySQL).
• Proven track record managing databases in cloud environments like AWS, GCP, or Azure.
• Leadership experience with a history of mentoring senior engineering staff.
• Must be able to work onsite 3 days per week in Oakland, California.

Nice to have

• Practical experience with vector search databases (Weaviate, Chroma, Pinecone, pgvector).
• Knowledge of embeddings and RAG (retrieval-augmented generation) for AI applications.

Culture & Benefits

• Comprehensive health, dental, and vision insurance with 401(k) matching.
• Annual learning and development stipend for professional growth.
• Paid parental leave and generous vacation policy (17 days plus federal holidays).
• Mental health support through Modern Health.
• Flexible spending accounts and company-sponsored life/disability insurance.