Senior Database Engineer

Department: Technology Location: Malta Description The Senior Database Engineer carries the pivotal responsibility of engineering, overseeing, and preserving the integrity, scalability, and performance of the company's complex relational open source database systems. This multifaceted role encompasses high-availability infrastructure management, replication tuning, robust backup and recovery procedures, precise performance optimization, capacity planning, proactive monitoring, and infrastructure automation using modern Infrastructure as Code (IaC) tooling. As a Senior Database Engineer, you will play an integral role in driving the reliability, resilience, and automation of our data infrastructure. You will champion automated configuration and deployment workflows via Ansible and/or Terraform, ensuring our database ecosystems scale seamlessly while delivering high-quality, ultra-low-latency services to our applications, clients, and internal stakeholders. This role stands as a keystone in our technology landscape, requiring a blend of deep technical expertise, engineering foresight, proactive problem-solving, and diligent documentation practices to maintain the health and vitality of our data tier. Key Responsibilities High Availability & Architecture: Construct, evolve, and uphold PostgreSQL (on-prem and RDS) and MySQL systems characterized by high availability, fault tolerance, and security, tailored to the specific performance requirements of latency-sensitive applications.Automation & Infrastructure as Code: Design, implement, and maintain database provisioning, configuration management, and deployment pipelines using Ansible and/or Terraform.Replication & Data Synchronization: Configure, manage, and troubleshoot multi-region and multi-node database replication strategies across both PostgreSQL (e.g., streaming replication, logical replication) and MySQL ecosystems.Performance Tuning & Optimization: Mitigate database downtime while continuously optimizing query execution, indexes, engine parameters, and schema designs for swift response times.Backup, Disaster Recovery & Security: Utilize high-speed transaction recovery methods, execute routine disaster recovery simulations, and enforce robust data backup, encryption, and privacy standards.Monitoring & Capacity Planning: Vigilantly monitor system health and database performance metrics, anticipate growth trends through capacity planning, and apply maintenance updates, security patches, and engine upgrades as required.Standards & Documentation: Establish, enforce, and meticulously document database policies, operational standards, schema designs, and runbooks.Knowledge Sharing & Leadership: Facilitate the transfer of knowledge within the team, mentor junior and mid-level engineers, and foster collective engineering excellence. Production Support: Offer Tier 3 support for critical production systems, actively participating in a 24x7 on-call rotation schedule when necessary. Requirements Minimum 5+ years of hands-on experience as a Database Engineer or Database Administrator in production environments (experience in high-throughput industries such as i-gaming, fintech, or e-commerce is highly preferred).Dual-Engine Expertise: Deep proficiency in both PostgreSQL and MySQL open-source database engines, including internal architectures, engine-specific parameter tuning, and troubleshooting.Automation & IaC: Proven practical experience using Ansible for configuration management/orchestration and Terraform for infrastructure provisioning.Database High Availability: Hands-on experience with HA solutions such as Patroni, PgBouncer, Galera Cluster, or MySQL InnoDB Cluster/Group Replication.Low-Latency & High-Volume: Track record of managing latency-sensitive, high-concurrency database deployments.Backup & Recovery: Comprehensive expertise in point-in-time recovery (PITR), logical/physical backups, security hardening, and data integrity checks. Scripting & Tooling: Strong proficiency in Bash/Shell/Python scripting, and working with frontend/backend DBA tools and monitoring suites. Benefits Great career development opportunitiesHybrid working modelInternational Health InsuranceHealth and Wellbeing Package (350 EUR per year)Birthday Day OffMe Time - 1 day off per year