Okta - Senior Database Reliability Engineer - PostgreSQL (6-8 yrs)

Key Responsibilities :

Database Performance & Availability :

- Ensure 24/7 availability and optimal performance of the production database tier across various services (MySQL, RDS Aurora PostgreSQL/MySQL, CloudSQL).

- Continuously monitor and improve the performance of databases, optimizing for speed, scalability, and reliability.

- Lead the efforts to address database performance bottlenecks and work on capacity planning and scaling strategies.

Database Architecture & Scaling :

- Design and implement strategies for scaling and tuning the database infrastructure to meet the demands of Okta's rapid growth.

- Participate in evolving the database architecture to support high availability, disaster recovery, and continuous uptime.

- Perform database benchmarking, ensuring that the system can handle large-scale, high-traffic use cases without performance degradation.

Automation & Configuration Management :

- Automate operational processes including backups, database replication, and monitoring tasks using tools like Ansible, Chef, and Terraform.

- Write infrastructure-as-code (IaC) to manage configuration, deployment, and maintenance of databases.

- Develop scripts and tools to automate common database-related tasks such as scaling, provisioning, and maintenance.

Collaboration with Engineering Teams :

- Partner with product engineers, performance engineers, and the site reliability engineering (SRE) team to ensure database reliability and scalability as part of Okta's larger technical ecosystem.

- Work closely with the engineering teams to ensure that databases are properly integrated into Okta's applications and infrastructure.

- Provide insights and guidance on best practices for database architecture, scaling, and performance optimization.

Documentation & Knowledge Sharing :

- Document database processes, configurations, and automated workflows to maintain operational efficiency and consistency across teams.

- Maintain runbooks and troubleshooting guides for common database issues, ensuring quick resolution during incidents.

- Contribute to knowledge sharing across teams by providing technical insights, training, and guidance on database best practices.

Incident Response & Troubleshooting :

- Participate in on-call rotation, responding to and resolving database incidents as part of a 24x7 operational environment.

- Troubleshoot and resolve complex production issues, ensuring that services remain available and performant.

- Implement proactive measures to prevent incidents, continually improving database resilience and reliability.

Required Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities :

- Extensive experience managing PostgreSQL (versions 11-15) at scale in a cloud environment.

- Hands-on experience with RDS Aurora MySQL/PostgreSQL and CloudSQL.

- Strong proficiency in a Linux environment, including Linux internals and performance tuning.

- Proficiency with Terraform, Chef, and Ansible for configuration management and automation.

- Experience with scripting languages such as Go, Python, Ruby, or Shell to automate processes and improve efficiency.

- Familiarity with AWS services (EC2, EBS, S3, RDS) or equivalent cloud platforms.

- Strong understanding of database performance tuning, scaling, backups, replication, and disaster recovery strategies.

- Excellent problem-solving skills and ability to troubleshoot complex production issues in a fast-paced, 24x7 environment.

- A positive team-player attitude, committed to supporting colleagues and delivering the best service for customers.

Bonus Points for :

- Experience with other database technologies like MySQL, NoSQL databases (e.g, DynamoDB, MongoDB).

- Familiarity with containerized services (e.g, Kubernetes, Docker) in a cloud environment.

- Security expertise in database encryption, key management, and access control strategies