Senior Database Reliability Engineer

TL;DR

Senior Database Reliability Engineer (AWS/SQL/Terraform): Own database infrastructure across AWS environments by provisioning, scaling, and operating SQL Server and RDS databases with an accent on Infrastructure-as-Code, reliability engineering, and observability. Focus on designing runbooks and SLOs, automating provisioning and migrations via CI/CD, and improving performance through query tuning and connection pooling.

Location: London, UK

Company

hirify.global provides asset servicing and operational solutions for investment management clients.

What you will do

• Provision and manage AWS RDS instances entirely through Terraform (parameter/subnet groups, IAM auth, secrets rotation, multi-AZ, read replicas).
• Own database reliability by designing runbooks, defining SLOs, and setting up alerting for slow queries, connection pool saturation, replication lag, and disk growth.
• Automate database operations including schema migrations, backup validation, failover drills, and patching via CI/CD pipelines.
• Improve performance with development teams using EXPLAIN ANALYZE, query tuning, indexing strategies, and connection pooling (PgBouncer/RDS Proxy).
• Secure the data layer with encryption at rest/in transit, IAM database authentication, credential rotation via AWS Secrets Manager, and least-privilege access.
• Participate in on-call rotation to respond to incidents, drive RCAs, and implement permanent fixes.

Requirements

• Strong SQL skills including complex queries, performance tuning, indexing, and EXPLAIN plans.
• Hands-on AWS experience with RDS Aurora, Secrets Manager, IAM, CloudWatch, VPC networking, and KMS encryption.
• Terraform experience including writing/maintaining modules, state management, remote backends, and version pinning.
• Scripting ability in Python or Bash for automation, operational tooling, and migration scripts.
• CI/CD experience (e.g., GitLab CI or equivalent) for infrastructure changes and database migrations.
• Observability experience with Datadog, CloudWatch, or Prometheus/Grafana for database metrics and alerting; comfortable with Linux production troubleshooting.

Nice to have

• Deep PostgreSQL knowledge (vacuuming/autovacuum tuning, replication, pg_stat views, extensions).
• Experience with PgBouncer or RDS Proxy for connection pooling configuration and tuning.
• Kubernetes familiarity (workload connectivity patterns, sidecars, secrets injection).
• Experience with zero-downtime database migrations (Flyway, Liquibase, or custom approaches).
• Experience in financial services or regulated environments (audit logging, data residency, PCI DSS/SOC 2 controls).
• Experience with AWS Aurora Global Database (cross-region replication and DR patterns).

Culture & Benefits

• Permanent full-time role with on-call responsibility for database incidents.
• Platform approach: build reusable Terraform modules so application teams can self-serve.
• Work in a regulated, client-focused environment supporting large-scale investment operations.
• Emphasis on innovation and reliability engineering rather than manual DBA administration.

Hiring process

• Interview stage evaluation after application submission.
• Only candidates proceeding to interviews are contacted.