Job Summary
The Senior Database Reliability Engineer plays a critical role in ensuring the resilience, performance, and security of enterprise database systems. This role is responsible for safeguarding data availability, optimizing database configurations, and driving automation to reduce operational overhead. It combines deep technical expertise with leadership in incident management, performance tuning, and high availability strategies.
As a senior member of the team, this individual will design and implement advanced solutions for SQL Server environments, lead complex troubleshooting efforts, and mentor junior engineers. The role requires proactive reliability engineering approach that emphasizes automation, observability, and the implementation of robust security and compliance measures. Success in this role means delivering scalable, cost-effective, and highly reliable database platforms that empower application teams and meet organizational service level objectives.
Job Location
Remote: Legal residents of one of the following states: AK, AL, AR, AZ, CT, DE, FL, GA, IA, ID, IN, KS, KY, LA, MD, ME, MI, MN, MO, MS, NC, ND, NH, NM, NV, OH, OK, PA, SC, SD, TN, TX, UT, VA, VT, WI, WV, or WY
We only accept W-2 candidates, H-1B sponsorship is not available.
Responsibilities
- Protect, preserve, and ensure the continuous availability of data.
- Measure, analyze, and fine-tune database performance, ensuring optimal configuration and resource utilization.
- Document and automate routine database tasks to reduce manual effort and improve operational efficiency.
- Build, test, and maintain internal tools that empower application and database developers to manage their own data needs.
- Gain proficiency in both in-house developed solutions and third-party tools used for database monitoring, management, and automation.
- Assume responsibility for implementing and maintaining database security, backup strategies, and routine maintenance procedures.
- Join the on-call rotation to respond to incidents, contribute to root cause analysis, and implement long-term fixes to prevent recurrence.
- Implement new SQL Server features to improve performance, reliability, and scalability.
- Respond to and resolve database performance incidents.
- Identify project opportunities and lead them through implementation.
- Provide mentorship and technical guidance to less experienced team members.
Physical Requirements
- Work is performed while sitting/standing and interfacing with a personal computer.
- Requires the ability to communicate effectively using speech, vision, and hearing.
- Requires the regular use of hands for simple grasping and fine manipulations.
- Requires occasional bending, squatting, crawling, climbing, and reaching.
- Requires the ability to occasionally lift, carry, push, or pull medium weights, up to 50lbs.
Qualifications
Experience
Minimum Qualifications:
- 5+ years of experience supporting Microsoft SQL Server in production environments.
- Proven experience designing, configuring, and supporting Always On Availability Groups in production, including patching, upgrades, and failover testing.
- Strong command of relational database theory and SQL Server internals (transactions/isolation, indexing & statistics, query plans, etc.).
- Experience creating runbooks and documentation to make work repeatable.
- Ability to lead complex incident triage and drive post-incident improvements for database-related issues.
- Possess a strong attention to detail.
Preferred Qualifications:
- Proficient with PowerShell for managing infrastructure, automating routine tasks, and developing custom scripts to support reliability engineering.
- Hands-on experience with PostgreSQL and/or MariaDB for common admin tasks (users/roles, backups/restores, minor version upgrades) and query analysis (EXPLAIN/ANALYZE basics, index tuning).
- Skilled in Git workflows, including pull requests, conflict resolution, and CI/CD integration.
- Proficient with operating scheduling/orchestration tools for database and system tasks, including monitoring, alerting, and failure handling, to streamline operations and reduce human intervention.
- Strong experience with Distributed Availability Groups and additional HA/DR technologies (failover clustering, log shipping, replication), including conducting regular DR exercises.
- Advanced T-SQL skills including designing schemas, writing and optimizing complex queries, interpreting execution plans, and resolving issues like parameter sniffing, blocking, and deadlocking.
- Defined and advanced security and compliance strategies for databases, including least privilege, auditing, encryption in transit/at rest, and enterprise-grade secrets management to meet organizational and regulatory requirements.
- Working knowledge of at least one general-purpose language (e.g., Python, C#, Go) for tooling and automation.
- Experience in implementing and refining database observability and alerting strategies to support reliability improvements and ensuring adherence to service-level objectives.
- Ability to perform capacity planning and cost/performance optimization across on-prem and/or managed services.
Education
This role does not require a degree. We value relevant skills and experience and alignment with our core values above all else.
Desired Traits & Skills
Hungry:
- Passionate for their work.
- Goes above and beyond to get the job done.
- Looks for opportunities in all aspects of the company.
- Process improvement focus.
Humble:
- Easily admits to mistakes.
- Acknowledges his/her weaknesses.
- Displays a grounded confidence but not arrogance.
Smart:
- Shows empathy.
- Attentive listener.
- Adjusts his/her own behavior to fit the nature of a conversation.
- Understands what others are thinking.
One Part of the Bigger Picture
WebstaurantStore’s parent company, Clark Associates, has made the Central Penn Business Journal’s list of “Top 50 Fastest Growing Companies” in Pennsylvania for 9 years in a row. The base of Clark’s success comes from four key directives: Hiring great people, creating value for customers, and investing in employees and their communities. These pillars drive each of Clark Associates’ multi-million-dollar businesses forward, including WebstaurantStore and other industry-leading names like 11400, Clark Food Service Equipment, The Restaurant Store, and Clark National Accounts.
Are You Ready?
Entrepreneurial Spirit is the driving force behind WebstaurantStore’s work environment. Making things better for our customers is our goal every single day. Achieving that goal means taking risks, accepting failure, and learning from our mistakes. If that sounds like a mission you’re ready to be a part of, we’d love to discuss this role with you further, and we’re excited to meet you!
Never heard of us? That’s okay! We love sharing our stories.
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The foodservice professional’s premier source for restaurant equipment, supplies, and knowledge online. Our purpose is to empower and equip people to run their businesses more profitably and efficiently.
Job Posted: 08/19/2024