Database Reliability Engineer

About The Company Starling Bank is the UK's pioneering digital bank committed to transforming the banking experience through innovative technology and customer-centric services. As the first fully licensed UK digital bank, Starling aims to make banking fairer, easier, and more transparent for everyone. The company’s mission is to leverage fast-moving technology, uphold honest values, and deliver fair service at the tap of a phone, anytime and anywhere. With a vibrant culture that fosters innovation and collaboration, Starling employs over 3,000 talented individuals across offices in London, Southampton, Cardiff, and Manchester. The organization is driven by a desire to democratize financial services, making them accessible, simple, and trustworthy for all its customers. Its technologists are at the heart of the company, working in a dynamic environment that encourages building, creating, and disrupting traditional banking models to stay at the forefront of fintech innovation. About The Role Starling Bank is seeking a highly skilled and motivated Data Engineer to join its Data & ML Engineering team. This role offers an exciting opportunity to work on critical infrastructure that supports the bank’s core operations and customer offerings. The successful candidate will be responsible for modernizing and scaling the bank’s database environment, ensuring high availability, security, and seamless data mobility across multiple cloud platforms. You will architect and implement innovative solutions using cutting-edge cloud-native and open-source technologies, contributing to the bank’s mission of delivering reliable and resilient data services. The role involves collaborating with cross-functional teams to develop automation, observability, and performance tuning strategies that enhance data integrity, security, and operational efficiency. This is a unique chance to influence the future of banking technology by building robust, scalable, and secure data infrastructure that supports the bank’s growth and customer satisfaction. Qualifications The ideal candidate will possess extensive experience working with PostgreSQL and Kubernetes, with a strong passion for managing stateful workloads in cloud-native environments. You should be proficient in leveraging CNPG for high availability, persistence, and automated failover management. A deep understanding of infrastructure-as-code principles, particularly using Terraform, is essential, along with a natural inclination towards managing infrastructure through code rather than manual processes. Experience in designing and implementing multi-tenant, multi-region, and multi-cloud distributed systems with a focus on data integrity and mobility is highly desirable. A security-first mindset, coupled with expertise in observability tools such as Prometheus, Grafana, OpenTelemetry, and Humio, is crucial to ensure the fleet remains secure and observable by design. Strong backend development skills using Java to build reliable, performant services that orchestrate data layers are also required. Candidates should demonstrate a systems thinking approach, a collaborative attitude, and a commitment to continuous learning and innovation. Responsibilities Modernize and scale the existing RDS fleet by architecting automated upgrade strategies, performance tuning, and minimizing downtime across hundreds of instances to ensure high reliability and availability.Design and implement cross-cloud portability solutions using CNPG and cloud-native patterns, enabling seamless deployment and management across AWS and GCP environments.Develop and enhance monitoring and observability frameworks, enabling proactive detection of performance regressions and health issues before impacting customers.Support data streaming, replication, and zero-downtime migration strategies to maintain data consistency, availability, and seamless user experience during infrastructure changes.Design and implement comprehensive business continuity and disaster recovery plans, automating data durability measures and rapid recovery processes across multiple regions to ensure resilience against failures. Benefits Generous holiday allowance of 25 days, plus the flexibility to take public holidays when convenient.An additional day off for your birthday to celebrate and relax.Annual leave increases with service length, with options to buy or sell up to five extra days off.Paid volunteering leave of 16 hours per year to support community engagement.Salary sacrifice schemes, including a company-enhanced pension scheme to support your financial future.Life insurance coverage at four times your salary and group income protection to provide peace of mind.Private Medical Insurance with VitalityHealth, including mental health support and cancer care, along with partner discounts with Waitrose, Mr&Mrs Smith, and Peloton.Family-friendly policies designed to support work-life balance and family needs.Perkbox membership offering retail discounts, wellness resources, and weekly perks to enhance your lifestyle.Access to initiatives such as Cycle to Work, gym partnerships through salary sacrifice, and electric vehicle leasing programs. Equal Opportunity Starling Bank is committed to fostering an inclusive and diverse workplace. We consider all candidates regardless of race, religion, national origin, age, sex, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, marital status, medical condition, disability, military status, or any other characteristic protected by law. We believe that a diverse team brings unique perspectives and drives innovation, which is essential to our mission of transforming banking for the better. When applying, you provide your personal data voluntarily and with full understanding that it will be processed in accordance with our Privacy Notice. By submitting your application, you agree to the collection and use of your personal information for recruitment purposes, ensuring a fair and equitable hiring process.