Senior PostgreSQL Database Administrator / Database Engineer

About the role

tastytrade is looking for a Senior PostgreSQL Database Administrator / Database Engineer to own the health, performance, and durability of high‑throughput Postgres clusters on both bare‑metal/on‑prem VMs and Amazon RDS. This hands‑on role works closely with development teams, reviewing migrations, tuning queries, and documenting processes.

Key responsibilities

• Drive performance for high‑volume OLTP workloads: query‑plan analysis, index strategy, autovacuum tuning, connection pooling, partitioning, and schema design review.
• Design, deploy, and operate highly available clusters using Patroni, including replication, failover, and switchover procedures.
• Own end‑to‑end backup and recovery: tooling, retention, PITR, and routine restore verification with defined RTO/RPO.
• Manage PostgreSQL in on‑prem and Amazon RDS environments, handling parameter groups, extensions, and upgrade paths.
• Plan and execute major‑version upgrades and large migrations with minimal downtime.
• Review application code and migrations written in Ruby on Rails/ActiveRecord and Java/JDBC, catching N+1 queries, unsafe DDL, missing indexes, and lock‑taking migrations.
• Build and maintain observability: metrics, slow‑query capture, lock and wait‑event analysis, capacity forecasting.
• Automate routine operations and participate in on‑call rotation, incident response, post‑mortems, and disaster‑recovery exercises.

Required profile

• Deep expertise with PostgreSQL query planner and ability to interpret EXPLAIN (ANALYZE, BUFFERS) output.
• Extensive hands‑on experience with a variety of index types (B‑tree, GIN, GiST, BRIN, partial, expression, covering).
• Proven track record designing and operating HA PostgreSQL clusters (Patroni, RDS).
• Strong background in backup, recovery, and upgrade strategies.
• Experience reviewing Ruby on Rails and Java JDBC database code.
• Ability to write clear documentation, runbooks, and architecture decision records.

Required skills

• PostgreSQL
• Patroni
• Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL
• Ruby on Rails / ActiveRecord
• Java JDBC
• B‑tree, GIN, GiST, BRIN indexes
• Autovacuum tuning
• Connection pooling
• Partitioning
• Backup and PITR
• Metrics and observability tooling
• Disaster‑recovery planning