Postgres DBA

Job Title: Postgres DBA
Duration-2 years
Job Location: Remote

Duration: 4 months but getting an extension.

Duties & Responsibilities include:

• Analyze business and technical requirements to develop and recommend database solutions that support both online and batch Java-based and AWS Glue/Apache Spark-based systems, including troubleshooting batch job performance issues against the database (e.g., deadlocks, long-running transactions, connection pool exhaustion) tied to database connections and transaction isolation levels.
• Coordinate with business and technology teams to define system requirements — program functions, output/input data, and support user acceptance and system testing for database components.
• Collaborate with application teams to design and deploy scalable, high-performance database solutions, including PostgreSQL and MySQL running on Amazon RDS; recommend improvements to existing schemas and data models.
• Create, deploy, and maintain database scripts, stored procedures, tables, triggers, and materialized views, leveraging automation and scripting (Python, Shell, Ansible, and AWS CloudFormation) to streamline deployment and configuration management.
• Manage database operations with minimal oversight including configuration, implementation, upgrades (including blue/green deployments), restores (pg_dump, pg_restore), schema changes, password/user management, failovers, disaster recovery, and database replication.
• Communicate and coordinate database changes and other operations with management, developers, and system users.
• Assess and improve database capacity and performance, including capacity planning, right-sizing RDS instances, storage autoscaling, and proactive resource forecasting.
• Maintain the central repository of data architecture artifacts — data dictionaries, admin procedures, scripts, and security controls.
• Maintain and test backup and recovery strategies for applications and databases.
• Perform troubleshooting, root cause analysis, and issue resolution.
• Monitor database health, transaction activity, and resource utilization (proactive and reactive), using monitoring tools such as Amazon CloudWatch Database Insights.

Qualifications:

• Bachelor's degree from an accredited college in a related discipline, or equivalent experience/combined education, with 6 - 8 years of relevant professional experience; or 4 - 6 years of relevant professional experience with a related Masters degree. Considered an emerging authority. Experience may be substituted in lieu of degree.
• Advanced scripting expertise including bash and Python for database administration and CloudFormation for deployments.
• Demonstrated experience with developing logical and physical data models, data/information exchange models, standards, or tools in a PostgreSQL database environment.
• Extensive database administration experience with PostgreSQL running on Amazon RDS.
• Database administration experience with one or more of MySQL, Microsoft SQL Server, and Oracle.
• Experience in evaluating data architecture & data models and communicating recommendations to the program team.
• Experience managing database replication and Change Data Capture (CDC) preferably in PostgreSQL using AWS Database Migration Service (DMS).
• Solid understanding of High Availability and Resiliency architecture (Multi-AZ and Multi-Region deployment architecture)
• Advanced experience in a Linux environment.
• Experience in an AWS environment.
• Strong verbal and written communications skills.
• Experience with database security and compliance controls, including FISMA/FedRAMP requirements, encryption at rest and in transit (SSL/TLS), role-based access control (RBAC), and audit logging using pgAudit.
• Advanced expertise with PostgreSQL query performance tuning, including use of EXPLAIN, index design and optimization, and autovacuum configuration.
• Experience with version control (Git) and CI/CD pipelines (e.g., Jenkins, GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, or AWS CodePipeline) for database deployments; familiarity with database migration tools such as Liquibase or Flyway.
• Demonstrated performance leading IT services delivery and achieving service level agreements.
• Strong focus on automation and documentation.

Desired Skills:

• Experience creating and administering AWS Glue databases and Athena tables.
• Experience developing software using other AWS services such as Lambda, Lake Formation, QuickSight, DynamoDB, Redshift, MSK/Kafka, Kinesis, ElastiCache, and OpenSearch.
• Experience with containerization technologies such as Docker or Kubernetes, including running PostgreSQL and MySQL workloads in containerized environments (e.g., Amazon ECS, Amazon EKS) or using RDS Proxy.
• Experience supporting Java and PySpark applications.
• Experience developing and executing Ansible scripts.