Senior Database Administrator – PostgreSQL

About the Role

Cloudheed operates PostgreSQL at scale on bare-metal infrastructure for enterprises across Europe. We are hiring a Senior DBA to take ownership of database reliability, performance, and architecture. You will work with production systems handling terabytes of data and thousands of transactions per second. This role requires deep PostgreSQL expertise and the ability to make critical decisions under pressure.

Responsibilities

• Architect and operate multi-node PostgreSQL clusters with 99.99% availability requirements
• Implement replication topologies: synchronous/asynchronous streaming, logical replication, delayed replicas
• Conduct root cause analysis for performance degradation and implement systematic improvements
• Manage WAL configuration, checkpoint tuning, and recovery optimization
• Design and execute zero-downtime migration strategies for customer databases
• Develop automation for provisioning, scaling, and failover procedures
• Establish backup and disaster recovery procedures meeting RPO/RTO requirements
• Perform capacity planning based on workload analysis and growth projections
• Advise customers on schema design, query optimization, and PostgreSQL best practices
• Maintain incident response procedures and participate in 24/7 on-call rotation

Requirements

• 7+ years administering PostgreSQL in production, including high-traffic transactional systems
• Expert-level understanding of PostgreSQL internals: process architecture, shared buffers, WAL mechanics, MVCC implementation, and vacuum behavior
• Proven experience designing and operating replication at scale: physical replication slots, conflict resolution, failover orchestration
• Track record of diagnosing and resolving complex performance issues using pg_stat_activity, pg_stat_statements, auto_explain, and system-level profiling
• Experience with connection management at scale: PgBouncer transaction/session pooling, connection limits, prepared statement handling
• Strong Linux administration: kernel tuning, filesystem selection, I/O scheduling, memory management
• Hands-on experience with enterprise backup tooling: pgBackRest, Barman, WAL-G, or equivalent
• Proficiency in SQL including window functions, CTEs, and query plan analysis
• Working knowledge of infrastructure automation: Ansible, Terraform, or similar
• Fluent in English; German is a strong advantage

Nice to Have

• Experience with PostgreSQL on dedicated bare-metal servers and NVMe storage optimization
• Knowledge of Patroni, repmgr, or similar HA management solutions
• Familiarity with PostgreSQL extension development or contributions to core PostgreSQL
• Experience operating pgvector for AI/ML workloads or PostGIS for geospatial applications
• Background in migrating large databases from Oracle, MySQL, or SQL Server to PostgreSQL
• PostgreSQL certification or recognized community involvement