Opportunity at
GoCardlessSenior Site Reliability Engineer (Database Focus)
GoCardless is seeking a Senior Site Reliability Engineer with a strong focus on databases to join the team in London. The organization operates a global bank…
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About This Role
GoCardless is seeking a Senior Site Reliability Engineer with a strong focus on databases to join the team in London. The organization operates a global bank payment network utilized by over 100,000 businesses globally to handle recurring and one-off payment collections via real-time payments, open banking, and Direct Debit. In this position, the professional will take ownership of the performance, scalability, and reliability of the database estate, working with self-managed…
Job Description
GoCardless is seeking a Senior Site Reliability Engineer with a strong focus on databases to join the team in London. The organization operates a global bank payment network utilized by over 100,000 businesses globally to handle recurring and one-off payment collections via real-time payments, open banking, and Direct Debit. In this position, the professional will take ownership of the performance, scalability, and reliability of the database estate, working with self-managed Stolon clusters alongside a GCP Cloud SQL fleet.
This role suits an engineer who enjoys tackling intricate performance challenges, leading major-version upgrades with minimal downtime, and guiding application teams on optimal query patterns. The Platform Engineering group operates across London, Riga, and Lisbon, balancing project delivery, incident management, and ongoing maintenance. Compensation features a base salary range of EUR 70,560 to EUR 105,840 per year, determined by factors such as role level, experience, and market data.
Employees gain access to a variety of benefits supporting personal wellbeing, flexible working arrangements, paid lunch or meal vouchers depending on work location, parental leave, a dedicated learning budget, and an annual work-away scheme allowing staff to operate from outside their home country for up to 20 working days.
Responsibilities
- Manage the database fleet reliably and maintain production database stability through platform changes
- Oversee performance and capacity by adjusting instance sizing, memory, autovacuum parameters, and PgBouncer connection limits
- Drive major-version database upgrades end to end while keeping downtime minimal
- Execute safe schema updates, data migrations, and backfills
- Design and test backup, recovery, replication, and failover mechanisms while lowering idle-in-transaction session counts
- Construct metric dashboards and alert systems within Prometheus, Grafana, and Datadog
- Collaborate with software teams to optimize query patterns and database usage
- Participate in on-call rotations, resolve live database incidents, and perform root cause analyses
Requirements
- Approximately 5 or more years of production experience working with PostgreSQL, covering replication, high availability, and backup protocols
- Thorough comprehension of Postgres internals, memory configuration, autovacuum, locking mechanisms, and connection pooling
- Practical background running production databases within cloud environments
- Advanced query analysis proficiencies involving indexing strategies and EXPLAIN plans
- Experience executing major-version database upgrades securely with limited downtime
- Familiarity managing infrastructure through Terraform or related Infrastructure as Code tools
- Competency with monitoring platforms such as Datadog, Prometheus, or Grafana
- Software engineering background involving code creation and team collaboration
- Incident response and on-call rotation experience
Qualifications
- Background utilizing Stolon or comparable Postgres high availability software
- Familiarity with managed cloud PostgreSQL services including AWS RDS or GCP Cloud SQL
- Experience using Kubernetes, ArgoCD, and GKE
- Prior database migration experience between platforms
- Familiarity with error budgets and Service Level Objectives
- Domain knowledge within financial services or payment operations
Core Skills
Benefits
- Medical coverage and dedicated wellbeing support
- Paid office lunches or meal vouchers based on location
- Work away scheme permitting up to 20 working days outside the country of residence in any 12-month period
- Adaptive working arrangements offering flexibility around personal schedules
- Parental leave options
- Annual learning and development budget
- Generous holiday allowance alongside volunteer days and moving leave
Frequently Asked Questions
Answers are based only on the employer’s listing; where it doesn’t say, neither do we.
What is the location of this job?
The position is based in London.
What is the salary range for this role?
The base salary is EUR 70,560 to EUR 105,840 per year, with initial offers generally falling between the minimum and mid-point based on experience and assessments.
What type of employment is this?
This is a full-time position.
What technology stack is utilized for databases?
The database environment features PostgreSQL, Stolon, Cloud SQL, and PgBouncer.
Sample Interview Questions
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