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SpreedlySenior Database Engineer
Spreedly is seeking a Senior Database Engineer to function as the primary database authority within its Reliability team. This individual contributor position focuses on optimizing a…
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About This Role
Spreedly is seeking a Senior Database Engineer to function as the primary database authority within its Reliability team. This individual contributor position focuses on optimizing a distributed database setup, specifically managing workload, schemas, queries, configurations, and change management practices for CockroachDB. The company operates an intelligent payments platform headquartered in Durham, North Carolina, offering merchants and fintech enterprises a unified API to connect with numerous global payment gateways and methods.…
Job Description
Spreedly is seeking a Senior Database Engineer to function as the primary database authority within its Reliability team. This individual contributor position focuses on optimizing a distributed database setup, specifically managing workload, schemas, queries, configurations, and change management practices for CockroachDB. The company operates an intelligent payments platform headquartered in Durham, North Carolina, offering merchants and fintech enterprises a unified API to connect with numerous global payment gateways and methods. The role suits an independent professional who enjoys solving complex distributed-data challenges and collaborating closely with application, platform, and infrastructure engineers. The work directly impacts system availability and transaction performance for high-volume payment processing.
Key focus areas include investigating system bottlenecks, identifying inefficient queries, establishing performance baselines, and guiding development teams on schema changes and transaction boundaries. The position also involves shaping operational strategies such as version upgrades, backup validation, and observability monitoring alongside Cockroach Labs. Candidates should possess extensive hands-on experience handling production databases under significant traffic volumes. Spreedly maintains a collaborative, transparent culture that values self-directed leadership and thoughtful problem-solving.
Responsibilities
- Analyze current database configurations using instrumentation and code reviews to detect performance bottlenecks and reliability vulnerabilities
- Resolve slow queries, missing or inefficient indexes, and suboptimal database settings
- Troubleshoot distributed database complications such as transaction retries, hot ranges, and contention issues in cooperation with application developers
- Establish baseline performance metrics to track workload changes early
- Advise engineering teams on the risks and design trade-offs of schema migrations, access patterns, and configurations prior to production deployment
- Contribute database expertise during incident response and root-cause investigations
- Design safer migration workflows, documentation, and guidance for data model modifications
- Manage operational tasks including upgrade planning, backup and recovery verification, cluster sizing, and observability improvements
- Collaborate with Cockroach Labs as a designated technical counterpart for the managed database environment
- Mentor fellow engineers regarding database troubleshooting and distributed database principles
Requirements
- Minimum of five years of primary professional experience operating and optimizing production databases
- Extensive hands-on background managing distributed databases, high-availability setups, and relational databases for critical business systems
- Demonstrated history of identifying database inefficiencies and delivering measurable enhancements to queries, schemas, and configurations
- Advanced SQL proficiency including comprehension of execution plans, transaction management, and distributed SQL trade-offs
- Capacity to evaluate risk in database modifications and articulate technical trade-offs to peers
- Independent investigator capable of navigating unfamiliar architectures and managing priorities autonomously
- Legally authorized to work in the job location country without requiring future sponsorship
Qualifications
- Practical production administration experience with CockroachDB handling significant transaction volumes
- PostgreSQL administration experience
- Familiarity operating managed database services and collaborating with vendor engineering and support teams
- Background executing zero-downtime or minimal-downtime schema migrations on massive, high-traffic tables
- Experience supporting financial technology, payments, or availability-sensitive platforms
- Knowledge of database capacity planning, cluster sizing, and multi-region topologies
- Competence building operational tools or checks using Python, Go, or comparable programming languages
- Familiarity with how Object-Relational Mappers shape database access patterns
- Cloud infrastructure experience on AWS or Azure, with database-focused cloud certifications considered a plus
Core Skills
Benefits
- Competitive salary and equity
- Medical and dental benefits with a 100% employer-paid option
- Company-paid life and disability insurance
- Optional vision insurance, supplemental insurance, and flexible spending accounts
- Open paid time off policy
- Twelve weeks of paid leave for new parents
- Matching 401(k) plan offering up to $5,000 yearly
- Annual professional development stipend of $1,000
- Monthly home working and digital lifestyle stipend
- New MacBook and a one-time accessory reimbursement
- Access to a company-paid professional coaching service
- Opportunities to visit the headquarters in Durham, North Carolina for remote staff
Frequently Asked Questions
Answers are based only on the employer’s listing; where it doesn’t say, neither do we.
What is the employment type for this position?
This is a full-time, senior individual contributor position with no direct reports.
What is the location or remote status of this job?
The posting does not specify a precise geographic location or remote status for the role, though it mentions visits to the Durham, North Carolina headquarters for remote employees and notes that the company cannot support remote staff living in New York.
What salary does Spreedly offer for this role?
The posting does not state a specific salary range, though it mentions a competitive salary paired with equity.
Are candidates required to have prior experience with CockroachDB or PostgreSQL?
Neither CockroachDB nor PostgreSQL experience is an absolute prerequisite, provided the applicant brings the deep distributed database management expertise required for the role.
Does Spreedly offer visa sponsorship for applicants?
No, Spreedly is unable to provide employment sponsorship, and applicants must already have legal authorization to work in the job location country.
Sample Interview Questions
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