[Hiring] Staff Database Reliability Engineer @Lutra

Role Description

Our client builds a high throughput system powering hundreds of billions of daily transactions, each completed within milliseconds, across globally distributed infrastructure designed for reliability and efficiency. Data is central to nearly every part of their platform, evolving from centralized, batch-oriented reporting toward a platform-driven architecture.

This is an IC role for someone who can move comfortably between deep technical problem solving and broader architectural leadership. You’ll help define how database systems are designed, operated, automated, observed, and evolved across the organization.

Key Responsibilities

• Design and evolve globally distributed database systems for performance, availability, scalability, and continuity in both bare-metal and cloud environments.
• Lead complex initiatives, establish technical direction, and influence engineering decisions across teams without relying on direct reporting authority.
• Identify opportunities to reduce operational complexity and consolidate the database and infrastructure technology footprint.
• Design and implement automation for provisioning, configuration, deployment, upgrades, testing, maintenance, and database change management use cases.
• Establish durable practices for operating critical data infrastructure, including monitoring, incident response, capacity planning, maintenance, security, IAM, auditing, and traceability.
• Diagnose difficult performance and reliability problems across globally distributed, latency-sensitive infrastructure and drive issues through root cause to durable resolution.
• Lead retrospectives and root-cause analysis for significant data-system incidents and convert findings into improvements to tooling, architecture, and operational practices.
• Evaluate emerging technologies, develop roadmaps for the data platform, and communicate priorities and trade-offs across engineering and business stakeholders.
• Raise the technical bar for engineers working with data infrastructure through architecture reviews, technical guidance, documentation, and hands-on collaboration.

Tech Stack

• Databases & data systems: MySQL, MariaDB, Galera, PostgreSQL, Aerospike, Redis, Kafka, StarRocks, Vertica, Trino, Iceberg
• Infrastructure & orchestration: Kubernetes, bare metal, Terraform, Ansible
• CI/CD & deployment: Helm, GitLab workflows, ArgoCD
• Observability: Prometheus, Grafana, Loki
• Programming & automation: Python, Go, Bash/Shell, Kotlin, Java
• Adjacent data technologies: Kafka, Spark, Flink, Hadoop, Presto/Trino

Qualifications

• 7+ years of experience spanning database reliability engineering, database administration, site reliability engineering focused on data systems, platform engineering, or a comparable infrastructure role.
• Experience operating large-scale production database systems where reliability, latency, availability, and performance genuinely matter.
• Deep expertise with relational and distributed data systems and meaningful production experience with several technologies (such as MySQL, MariaDB, Galera, PostgreSQL, Kafka, Aerospike, Redis, StarRocks, or Vertica).
• Experience deploying and operating stateful systems across Kubernetes and bare-metal infrastructure.
• Strong automation instincts and experience with infrastructure tooling such as Terraform, Ansible, Helm, GitLab CI/CD, ArgoCD, or comparable technologies.
• Ability to automate infrastructure and operational workflows using Python, Go, Bash/Shell, Java, Kotlin, or another appropriate programming language.
• Experience building or operating effective observability systems (using technologies such as Prometheus, Grafana, Loki, or equivalent tooling).
• Understanding of database change management and experience with tooling such as Liquibase, Flyway, Alembic, or similar systems.
• Ability to troubleshoot complex failures across distributed infrastructure and identify root causes.
• Comfortable operating at “staff level” (setting direction, navigating ambiguity, mentoring other engineers, balancing immediate operational needs against long-term architecture).
• Ability to communicate complex technical decisions clearly to both deeply technical colleagues and stakeholders without the same infrastructure background.

It’s a bonus if

• Experience operating databases across globally distributed, ultra-low-latency infrastructure.
• Meaningful experience with streaming and large-scale data technologies such as Kafka, Spark, Flink, Hadoop, Trino/Presto, or Iceberg.
• Experience simplifying or consolidating a large database technology footprint without compromising reliability or developer productivity.
• Experience establishing security, IAM, auditing, and traceability practices for critical data infrastructure.
• Experience working in adtech, financial infrastructure, high-frequency systems, large-scale marketplaces, or environments with extremely high transaction volume and low latency.

Interested in learning more?

Please send your resume or LinkedIn profile URL to [email protected] with “Staff Database Reliability Engineer” as the subject line. One of our talent partners will be in contact shortly!