Lead Database Reliability Engineer

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Lead Database Reliability Engineer (DBRE) - Oracle RAC

Self-Managed Oracle RAC | HA/DR | Performance | Automation | Engineering Influence

Level

Lead DBRE

Domain

Oracle RAC and Mission-Critical Relational Infrastructure

Primary Focus

Hands-on Oracle RAC reliability, lifecycle ownership, technical escalation, automation, application partnership, and cross-functional execution

Work Expectations

U.S. Eastern Time business hours; on-call participation as required

1. Role Summary

We are seeking an experienced Lead DBRE with deep hands-on expertise in Oracle Database and self-managed Oracle RAC environments. The role owns technical execution for a major Oracle domain and improves reliability, performance, scalability, lifecycle management, automation, and operational discipline.

Beyond traditional DBA operations, the Lead DBRE partners with application and infrastructure teams to influence schema, SQL, connection management, resiliency, observability, and safe deployment practices. The role remains hands-on while providing technical leadership, mentoring, and incident escalation.

2. Level Scope and Leadership Expectations

Lead DBRE is a senior technical leadership role focused on owning execution for a major database domain. The expectation is to solve difficult production problems, lead initiatives end to end, guide engineers, create durable operating standards, and drive cross-functional closure without default people-management responsibility.

Dimension

Expectation at This Level

Scope of Ownership

Owns reliability and execution for a significant Oracle platform domain, including incidents, lifecycle activities, routine maintenance, capacity risks, HA/DR readiness, and service-impacting improvements.

Technical Depth

Diagnoses complex RAC, Clusterware, ASM, Data Guard, SQL performance, storage, interconnect, OS, backup, and recovery problems.

Technical Leadership

Acts as a primary escalation point, mentors engineers, reviews designs, raises standards, and influences application and infrastructure decisions.

Execution

Leads complex initiatives end to end, aligns stakeholders, manages dependencies, and drives permanent corrective actions to closure.

Communication

Explains technical tradeoffs, communicates clearly during incidents, and keeps risks, ownership, dependencies, and timelines visible.

Automation and Standards

Builds repeatable automation, CI/CD practices, runbooks, monitoring, and golden paths that reduce toil and failure risk.

3. Key Responsibilities

A. Oracle RAC Platform Ownership

• Administer and improve Oracle RAC, Grid Infrastructure, Clusterware, ASM, services, SCAN/listeners, and interconnect configurations.

• Plan and execute patching, upgrades, migrations, capacity changes, and lifecycle activities with controlled change and rollback practices.

• Design, operate, and validate Data Guard, RMAN, backup/recovery, failover, switchover, and disaster-recovery procedures.

B. Performance and Incident Leadership

• Lead performance analysis using AWR, ASH, ADDM, SQL Monitor, execution plans, SQL Trace, TKPROF, and OS/storage diagnostics.

• Diagnose Cache Fusion, GC waits, workload placement, connection storms, cluster instability, storage latency, and interconnect issues.

• Serve as the technical escalation point for critical incidents, lead stabilization and RCA, and drive permanent corrective actions.

C. Engineering Influence and Shift-Left Reliability

• Partner with application teams on SQL, indexing, partitioning, schema design, bind usage, connection pooling, transaction boundaries, and resilient failover behavior.

• Establish database design reviews, deployment guardrails, developer guidance, and production-readiness standards.

D. Automation and Observability

• Automate provisioning, validation, patching, maintenance, backup checks, DR exercises, health checks, and recurring remediation using Python, Shell, Ansible, Terraform, or similar technologies.

• Improve Oracle observability using OEM, Prometheus, Grafana, OpenTelemetry, Datadog, Splunk, or comparable tools; define actionable service indicators and objectives.

4. Required Qualifications and Experience

• 8+ years of database or reliability engineering experience, including significant Lead or Senior responsibility for self-managed production Oracle RAC.

• Deep hands-on knowledge of Oracle RAC, Grid Infrastructure/Clusterware, ASM, Data Guard, RMAN, RAC Services, SCAN/listeners, Cache Fusion, and interconnect behavior.

• Strong Oracle performance tuning and diagnostics experience using AWR, ASH, execution plans, SQL Trace, and Linux diagnostics.

• Experience with patching, upgrades, migrations, backup/recovery, DR exercises, and controlled production change.

• Strong Linux/Unix systems troubleshooting skills.

• Hands-on automation using Python, Shell, Ansible, Terraform, or comparable tooling.

• Strong technical leadership, mentoring, incident communication, and cross-functional execution skills.

5. Preferred Qualifications

• Oracle Exadata, OCI, Cloud@Customer, AWS, or hybrid Oracle deployment experience.

• Application Continuity, FAN, TAF, FSFO, Far Sync, GoldenGate, GDS, TDE, ZDLRA, or advanced Oracle HA capabilities.

• Database schema CI/CD using Liquibase, Flyway, Bytebase, or comparable tooling.

• Oracle certifications or relevant SRE/cloud architecture credentials.

6. Expected Outcomes in the First 6-12 Months

• Establish measurable reliability, MTTR, patching, backup/recovery, and DR-readiness baselines and deliver material improvement.

• Automate high-frequency and high-risk operational workflows, prioritizing safety, maintainability, and auditability.

• Establish a practical database architecture and production-readiness review process with measurable adoption by application teams.

• Deliver documented capacity, lifecycle, resiliency, and corrective-action plans for critical RAC environments.

7. What This Role Does Not Include

• This is not a people-management role unless separately assigned; leadership is expected through technical direction, mentoring, and execution ownership.

• This is not a project-management-only role; the Lead DBRE must remain deeply hands-on.

• This is not a traditional DBA ticket queue; durable fixes, automation, standards, capacity planning, and reliability improvements are expected.

• This role does not own application code or business logic, although it influences database-impacting application design.

• The role does not assume unlimited or last-minute DBRE capacity; work must be planned, prioritized, communicated, and committed through the appropriate process.

8. Work Expectations and Location

This role requires working during U.S. Eastern Time (ET) business hours and participating in on-call support as required.