Job Description – PostgreSQL Administrator:
We are seeking a PostgreSQL Administrator with strong experience in managing, migrating, and optimizing PostgreSQL and Aurora PostgreSQL environments. The role focuses on platform architecture, high availability, security hardening, and operational excellence across on-premises and cloud-hosted PostgreSQL estates.
The ideal candidate will design and maintain robust PostgreSQL infrastructure, lead database migrations from heterogeneous platforms (such as SQL Server or Oracle), and ensure production systems meet stringent performance, availability, and compliance requirements.
This role requires deep expertise in PostgreSQL internals, cloud-native database services, and operational automation.
Key Responsibilities:
Migration Planning & Platform Architecture:
- Architect and execute migration strategies for moving SQL Server, Oracle, and other heterogeneous databases to PostgreSQL / Aurora PostgreSQL with minimal downtime.
- Design target PostgreSQL architectures including instance sizing, storage layout, replication topologies, and high-availability configurations.
- Plan and implement migration cutover strategies in coordination with application, DBA, and platform teams; ensure rollback capabilities are validated.
- Evaluate and recommend migration tooling (AWS DMS, SCT, pg_dump/pg_restore, Bucardo, pglogical) based on workload characteristics and downtime tolerance.
Database Administration & Operations:
- Install, configure, and manage PostgreSQL instances across development, staging, and production environments (self-managed and AWS RDS/Aurora).
- Implement and manage streaming replication, logical replication, and failover mechanisms (Patroni, repmgr, or Aurora native failover).
- Perform routine maintenance: vacuum tuning, autovacuum optimization, bloat monitoring, index maintenance, and major version upgrades.
- Manage backup and disaster recovery strategies using pgBackRest, Barman, WAL archiving, and cross-region snapshot replication.
Performance Tuning & Capacity Management:
- Monitor and optimize PostgreSQL performance at the OS and database level: I/O throughput, memory allocation (shared_buffers, work_mem, effective_cache_size), connection pooling (PgBouncer), and lock contention.
- Analyze slow queries in collaboration with development teams, recommend configuration changes, partitioning strategies, and hardware scaling.
- Tune Aurora PostgreSQL-specific parameters and leverage Optimized Reads/Writes where applicable.
- Conduct capacity planning and forecast infrastructure needs based on workload growth trends.
Security, Compliance & Governance:
- Harden PostgreSQL environments: enforce SSL/TLS, configure role-based access control (RBAC), implement row-level security (RLS), and manage secrets via AWS Secrets Manager or HashiCorp Vault.
- Ensure compliance with organizational security policies, data retention requirements, and audit mandates (pgAudit, CloudTrail).
- Manage encryption at rest and in transit; oversee key rotation procedures.
- Review and approve database changes for security impact; enforce least-privilege access principles.
Automation, Monitoring & Incident Response:
- Automate operational tasks using shell scripts, Python, Ansible, Terraform, or AWS CloudFormation.
- Deploy and maintain monitoring and alerting stacks (CloudWatch, Prometheus/Grafana, Datadog, pg_stat_statements, pgBadger).
- Provide L2/L3 operational support, lead incident response for database outages, replication lag, and performance degradations.
- Develop and maintain runbooks, operational standards, and disaster recovery playbooks.
Collaboration & Documentation:
- Partner with development teams to enforce database standards and review schema changes for operational impact.
- Mentor internal teams on PostgreSQL administration best practices, migration considerations, and cloud-native database operations.
- Document architecture decisions, operational procedures, and migration runbooks.
Preferred Qualifications:
- 4+ years of experience in database administration, with at least 3 years focused on PostgreSQL in production environments.
- Proven track record in large-scale, heterogeneous migrations (SQL Server → PostgreSQL/Aurora PostgreSQL or similar).
- Strong proficiency in:
- PostgreSQL internals: WAL, MVCC, vacuum mechanics, buffer management, query planner
- High availability: streaming replication, logical replication, Patroni, repmgr
- Backup & recovery: pgBackRest, Barman, point-in-time recovery (PITR)
- Linux system administration relevant to PostgreSQL (tuning kernel parameters, filesystems, I/O schedulers)
- AWS RDS/Aurora operations, IAM, VPC networking, security groups, and parameter groups
- Experience with Infrastructure as Code (Terraform, CloudFormation, Ansible) and CI/CD pipelines for database changes.
- Familiarity with monitoring and observability tools: CloudWatch, Prometheus/Grafana, Datadog, pg_stat_statements, pgBadger.
Nice-to-Have:
- Exposure to other database platforms (Oracle, MySQL, SQL Server) for cross-platform migration support.
- Experience with database DevOps practices: GitOps, schema drift detection, automated testing (e.g., tSQLt equivalents, pgTAP).
- Knowledge of Kubernetes operators for PostgreSQL (CloudNativePG, Zalando Postgres Operator).
- AWS Certified Database – Specialty or EDB PostgreSQL professional certifications.
- Experience with pgBouncer connection pooling, pgpool-II, or similar middleware.
- Familiarity with event streaming integrations (Debezium, Kafka) for CDC and real-time data pipelines.