Senior Database Administrator

Company: i2b Technologies

Website: Visit Website

Business Type: Startup

Company Type: Product

Business Model: B2B

Funding Stage: Pre-seed

Industry: Information Technology

Salary Range: ₹ 10-30 Lacs PA

Job Description Senior Database Administrator (DBA) Database Reliability & Performance Senior Individual Contributor

• Experience: 5–9 years in production database administration / engineering
• Level: Senior Individual Contributor (hands-on)
• Function: Data Platform — reliability, performance, and governance across relational and distributed SQL & NoSQL DBs.

About The Role We are hiring a Senior Database Administrator to own the health, performance, and reliability of the data layer behind a high-scale, multi-tenant platform. Our environment spans several independent PostgreSQL database instances, a cache-first read tier, change-data-capture pipeline, analytics and archival stores. Should be capable of implementing NoSQL stores (Cassandra / ScyllaDB) & MySQL end to end as we scale. This is a hands-on senior IC role for someone who has run demanding production databases and wants full ownership: partitioning and maintenance, performance tuning, monitoring, uptime, disaster recovery, and the security and data-governance documentation that keeps a regulated, multi-tenant platform audit-ready. You will work closely with, and take direction from, engineering leadership — translating priorities into a well-run, well-documented data platform.

What You'll Own PostgreSQL Depth

• Administer multiple production PostgreSQL instances (v16+), including schema/DDL review, migrations, and release coordination.
• Design and maintain table partitioning strategies (range/hash/time-based) and automate partition lifecycle — creation, retention windows, and safe drops.
• Own query and instance performance tuning: EXPLAIN/ANALYZE, indexing strategy, autovacuum/bloat management, connection pooling (e.g. PgBouncer), and parameter-group tuning.
• Execute zero-downtime schema changes using expand–migrate–contract / blue-green patterns; assess lock impact and avoid long ACCESS EXCLUSIVE locks on hot tables.
• Manage replica topology (writer/reader endpoints), replication lag, and read-scaling as load grows.
• Partner with app teams on migration tooling (e.g. Flyway) and paired forward/rollback scripts; enforce idempotent, reviewed, tested DDL.

NoSQL & Scale

• Data-model, deploy, and operate distributed NoSQL clusters — Cassandra and/or ScyllaDB — including partition/clustering key design, compaction strategy, repair, and node operations (bootstrap, decommission, scale-out).
• Lead the planned migration of high-volume payload tables from partitioned PostgreSQL to Cassandra/ScyllaDB: capacity planning, dual-write/backfill design, cutover, and validation.
• Tune distributed-store read/write paths, consistency levels, and cluster sizing for predictable latency at scale.
• Support the cache-first architecture (Redis) and change-data-capture / streaming pipelines (e.g. Kafka) that move data to analytics and cold-archival stores.

Operations, Reliability & DR

• Own database uptime and SLOs; build and maintain monitoring, alerting, and dashboards for the key signals (latency, replication lag, CPU/IO, connections, vacuum lag, error rates).
• Define and regularly test backup and disaster-recovery strategy — RPO/RTO targets, point-in-time recovery, restore drills, and cross-AZ / future multi-region readiness.
• Drive incident response for database-related issues: triage, mitigation, root-cause analysis, and follow-up actions.
• Write and maintain runbooks (partition maintenance, failover, archival, DR, migration procedures) and participate in an on-call rotation for the data layer.
• Establish production-change discipline: pre-flight and post-deploy verification, rollback criteria, and backup verification before destructive operations.

Security, Governance & Documentation

• Implement and maintain database access control — least-privilege roles, schema-scoped permissions, and row-level security (RLS) for multi-tenant isolation.
• Own data-governance documentation: PII maps, per-table retention policies, audit-readiness, and the controls behind privacy-regulation compliance (e.g. GDPR / DPDP-style erasure and legal-hold workflows).
• Author and maintain architecture decision records (ADRs), schema documentation, and monitoring/runbook docs so the data platform is legible to the wider team.
• Uphold encryption-at-rest/in-transit posture and safe handling of sensitive columns; keep the data layer aligned with the platform's compliance requirements.

Coding & Automation Bar (Required) This role is automation-first, not click-ops. The right candidate treats repetitive database work as something to script away and can drop into application code when a problem demands it.

• Strong scripting in Python and Bash for automation of maintenance, backups, partition management, backfills, and health checks.
• Comfortable with infrastructure-as-code (e.g. Terraform) and configuration management (e.g. Ansible) for reproducible database infrastructure.
• Solid SQL and PL/pgSQL; able to read and debug application-layer database code and, worst case, write or patch application code (e.g. Python/Node/Java) to unblock a fix.
• Fluent with Git-based workflows, code review, and CI for database migrations and tooling.

Required Qualifications

• 6–9 years operating relational databases in demanding production environments, with deep PostgreSQL expertise (internals, partitioning, replication, performance tuning).
• Hands-on experience running at least one distributed NoSQL store in production — Cassandra or ScyllaDB strongly preferred (other wide-column/distributed stores considered).
• Proven ownership of backup/DR, monitoring, and incident response for production databases.
• Strong scripting/automation background (Python, Bash) and experience with IaC.
• Experience with managed cloud databases (AWS RDS or equivalent) and understanding of instance/parameter-group tuning, replicas, and failover.
• Experience designing for multi-tenancy and data isolation at scale.
• Clear written communication — able to produce runbooks, ADRs, and governance docs a team can rely on.

Nice to Have

• Experience migrating workloads from PostgreSQL to Cassandra/ScyllaDB (or similar relational-to-distributed migrations).
• Familiarity with Redis as a cache tier and with CDC / streaming pipelines (e.g. Kafka, Debezium).
• Exposure to Flyway (or Liquibase), pgTAP or similar schema testing, and PgBouncer.
• Working knowledge of privacy regulations (GDPR, India DPDP) and audit/compliance processes.

How You Work

• Ownership mindset — takes a directive and runs it to done, with sound judgment on trade-offs.
• Reliability-first and detail-oriented; disciplined about verification, rollback, and documentation.
• Collaborative in a high-performing engineering team; communicates clearly with developers and leadership.
• Pragmatic and scale-aware — designs for where the platform is going, not just where it is.