Senior Database Administrator (DevOps)

Quick Facts

• Role: Senior Database Administrator (DevOps)
• Primary platform: PostgreSQL on Azure
• Focus: Database health, reliability, and CI/CD-driven lifecycle of database artifacts for production AI systems

Description

As a Senior DBA with DevOps expertise, you will own database health and reliability end-to-end, treating schemas, migrations, stored procedures, and database infrastructure as versioned, tested, and continuously delivered artifacts. This is a non-traditional DBA role with strong DevOps ownership of the database lifecycle.

Responsibilities

• Own the database artifact lifecycle: version-control database objects (schemas, migrations, stored procedures/functions, views, roles) and deliver changes through CI/CD using Flyway, Liquibase, or sqitch.
• Develop and maintain scalable ETL/ELT pipelines with Databricks, PySpark, and Delta Lake, optimizing for performance, reliability, and data quality.
• Build database CI/CD pipelines with automated migration testing, schema validation, rollback strategies, and environment promotion (dev → staging → production).
• Monitor and optimize database performance via query analysis (EXPLAIN/EXPLAIN ANALYZE), index tuning, and autovacuum/vacuum configuration; manage connection pooling with PgBouncer and govern long-running queries.
• Own backup, recovery, and disaster recovery: PITR, WAL archiving, streaming/logical replication configuration, and regular recovery testing.
• Manage security and access control with RBAC, RLS, audit logging, secrets rotation via Azure Key Vault, and data protection compliance.
• Operate PostgreSQL on Azure (Azure Database for PostgreSQL Flexible Server): HA setup, read replicas, scaling, and cost governance.
• Enforce database change management standards including peer review of migration scripts, naming conventions, anti-pattern detection, and pre-production validation gates.
• Support Data and Backend Engineers with database design guidance and troubleshooting of data access bottlenecks.
• Provide database observability using dashboards/alerting for query performance, replication lag, connection saturation, bloat, and storage growth (Azure Monitor, pg_stat_* views, Grafana).
• Use Claude Code daily for migration script authoring/review, documentation generation, automation of maintenance tasks, and faster troubleshooting.

Requirements

• 6+ years of professional DBA experience with PostgreSQL in production.
• DevOps mindset: manage database artifacts as code with version control, automated testing, and pipeline-driven delivery.
• Hands-on schema migration tooling experience (Flyway, Liquibase, sqitch, or equivalent), including branching, baseline management, and rollback patterns.
• Expert-level PostgreSQL internals (MVCC, WAL, autovacuum, locking behavior, query planner, and index types such as B-tree, GIN, GiST, BRIN).
• Experience with PostgreSQL HA and replication: streaming replication, Patroni (or equivalent), logical replication, and failover procedures.
• Production experience with Azure Database for PostgreSQL Flexible Server: HA configuration, PITR, read replicas, and Azure Monitor integration.
• Ability to automate database work with Python or Bash and integrate automation into CI/CD.
• CI/CD experience for database delivery, e.g., integrating migration tooling into GitHub Actions with environment promotion and rollback gates.
• Security expertise: RBAC, RLS, Azure Key Vault secrets rotation, encryption in transit/at rest, and audit trail requirements.
• Observability knowledge (Azure Monitor, pg_stat_* views, Grafana).
• Strong communication skills to explain database constraints, risks, and tradeoffs to engineering and product stakeholders.

Benefits

• Contract under Polish law (B2B or Umowa o Pracę)
• Private medical care, group insurance, Multisport card
• English classes
• Hybrid work (at least 1 day/week on-site) in Warsaw (Mokotów)
• International team, continuous learning and growth
• On-site perks such as Pinball and PlayStation