Senior Database Reliability Engineer, Okta

• Experience Level: Mid–Senior (4+ years PostgreSQL experience)
• We are looking for a highly skilled Database Reliability Engineer (DBRE) with deep expertise in PostgreSQL at scale and solid experience with MySQL
• 4 plus years of hands-on PostgreSQL experience in high-volume, distributed, or large-scale production environments
• Strong knowledge of PostgreSQL internals (WAL, MVCC, bloat/ vacuum tuning, query planner, indexing, logical replication)
• Production experience with MySQL (InnoDB internals, replication, performance tuning)
• Advanced SQL and strong understanding of schema design and query optimization
• Experience with Linux systems, networking fundamentals, and systems troubleshooting
• Experience building automation with Go or Python
• Production experience with monitoring tools (Prometheus, Grafana, Datadog, PMM, pg_stat_statements, etc.)
• Hands-on experience with cloud environments (AWS or GCP)

Desirable

• In this role, you will design, operationalize, and optimize the data persistence layer that powers our large-scale, mission-critical systems
• You will work closely with SRE, Platform, and Engineering teams to ensure performance, reliability, automation, and operational excellence across our database environment
• This is a hands-on engineering role focused on building resilient data infrastructure, not just administering it
• Design, implement, and operate highly available PostgreSQL clusters (physical replication, logical replication, sharding/partitioning, failover automation)
• Optimize query performance, indexing strategies, schema design, and storage engines
• Perform capacity planning, growth forecasting, and workload modeling
• Own high-availability strategies including automatic failover, multi-AZ/multi-region setups, and disaster recovery
• Develop automation for any and all tasks including but not limited to: provisioning, configuration, backups, failovers, vacuum tuning, and schema management using tools such as Terraform, Ansible, Kubernetes Operators, or custom tooling
• Build monitoring, alerting, and self-healing systems for PostgreSQL and MySQL
• Operations & Incident Response
• Lead response during database incidents—performance regressions, replication lag, deadlocks, bloat issues, storage failures, etc
• Conduct root-cause analysis and implement permanent fixes
• Partner with software engineers to review SQL, optimize schemas, and ensure efficient use of PostgreSQL features
• Provide guidance on database-related design patterns, migrations, version upgrades, and best practices