About DrFirst
For 25 years, DrFirst has empowered providers and patients to achieve better health through intelligent medication management. We improve healthcare workflows and help patients start and stay on therapy with end-to-end solutions that enhance prescription access, affordability, and adherence. Our solutions help 100 million patients a year and are used by more than 420,000 prescribers, 71,000 pharmacies, 270 EHRs and health information systems, and over 2,000 hospitals in the U.S. This is a great opportunity to be a part of a successful Healthcare IT company experiencing significant growth. Here you'll get to work with some of the smartest and most interesting people around, solving unique and complex challenges in healthcare on a scale matched by few companies. If you get excited about stretching yourself in new ways, developing yourself to your fullest potential, and care about working with smart colleagues, we want to talk to you!
Position Overview
We are seeking a cloud native PostgreSQL Database Administrator for our System Operations team. This role sits at the center of how data moves through DrFirst. PostgreSQL on AWS Aurora serves as one critical layer inside a broader, event driven persistence architecture. You will think beyond a single database. You will think about how data enters our platform from prescribers, pharmacies, EHRs, and patient channels, how it moves through message and event brokers, how it lands in PostgreSQL and complementary stores, and how applications read it back reliably at scale.
This is a hands on, automation first role for someone who treats the database as part of a connected data ecosystem rather than a standalone box.
Who Will Love This Role
- A modern data thinker who sees PostgreSQL as one layer in a larger persistence story spanning streaming data, event brokers, caching, and search.
- A problem solver who enjoys diagnosing complex performance issues across distributed systems and shipping clean, durable fixes.
- An automation enthusiast who writes Python and shell scripts to remove toil and scale operations through code.
- A reliability minded engineer who takes pride in backup strategy, disaster recovery readiness, and meeting tight RTO and RPO targets.
- A collaborative team player who works closely with DevOps, application engineering, and architecture on event driven, cloud native designs.
- A continuous learner who stays current with PostgreSQL, AWS, streaming platforms, and the broader cloud data field.
What you will work on
Cloud Native Database Operations
- Manage daily operations of PostgreSQL on AWS Aurora across multiple accounts and environments.
- Own database setup, configuration, parameter tuning, and deployment using cloud native patterns.
- Execute upgrades, patches, and version migrations with minimal downtime using blue green and rolling deployment strategies.
- Monitor database health, performance, and capacity using CloudWatch, Performance Insights, AppDynamics, and Grafana.
Modern Persistence and Event Driven Data Flow
- Operate PostgreSQL as the system of record inside an event driven architecture, where data arrives from many upstream sources through message and event brokers.
- Collaborate with application and platform engineering on how data flows from event streams such as Kafka and Kinesis into PostgreSQL and back out to consumers.
- Partner on caching and in memory data patterns such as Redis or ElastiCache that sit in front of PostgreSQL for high read workloads.
- Help shape a unified persistence layer that gives applications consistent, reliable data regardless of which upstream system originated it.
- Support read replicas, logical replication, and change data capture patterns that feed downstream analytics, search, and reporting systems.
Performance Optimization at Scale
- Tune PostgreSQL and Aurora configurations for OLTP, read heavy reporting, and mixed workloads.
- Analyze and resolve performance bottlenecks using EXPLAIN ANALYZE, pg_stat_statements, Performance Insights, and CloudWatch metrics.
- Optimize indexes, query plans, connection pooling, and parameter groups for fast response times on patient facing workflows.
- Review SQL, data models, and access patterns with development teams before they reach production.
AWS Cloud Infrastructure
- Use Aurora PostgreSQL features including read replicas, Global Database, automated backups, point in time recovery, and high availability configurations.
- Use AWS services including RDS, CloudWatch, Systems Manager, Lambda, S3, IAM, and Secrets Manager for database operations.
- Apply AWS best practices for security, monitoring, cost optimization, and right sizing.
Automation and Scripting
- Build Python and shell automation for provisioning, backup verification, refresh workflows, alerting, and compliance reporting.
- Develop and maintain CI/CD pipelines for database schema changes and infrastructure deployments.
- Treat manual work as a backlog item. If you did it twice, script it.
- Use infrastructure as code such as Terraform or CloudFormation for repeatable, version controlled database infrastructure.
Reliability, Backup, and Disaster Recovery
- Design, test, and document backup and recovery strategies that meet aggressive RTO and RPO targets for healthcare workloads.
- Run quarterly disaster recovery drills and maintain runbooks for failure scenarios.
- Configure multi AZ deployments and read replicas for automatic failover and high availability.
Collaboration and Support
- Provide technical support and troubleshooting for database and data flow issues across the platform.
- Partner with DevOps, NetOps, application engineering, and architecture on integrated cloud native solutions.
- Participate in on call rotation for production support.
- Document procedures, configurations, troubleshooting guides, and architectural decisions.
Qualifications
Required
- 4 to 7 years of hands on experience as a PostgreSQL Database Administrator in cloud environments.
- Strong production experience with AWS Aurora PostgreSQL and RDS.
- Proficiency in PostgreSQL performance tuning, query optimization, and root cause analysis.
- Solid understanding of backup and recovery strategies, including point in time recovery and high availability configurations.
- Experience with database security, user management, IAM integration, and access controls.
- Programming skills in Python and shell scripting for automation.
- Working knowledge of AWS services such as CloudWatch, Lambda, S3, Systems Manager, IAM, and Secrets Manager.
- Conceptual familiarity with modern persistence patterns: message and event brokers such as Kafka, Kinesis, or RabbitMQ, in memory caches such as Redis or ElastiCache, and event driven data flow. Hands on experience is a plus. A candidate who speaks the language and understands how PostgreSQL fits the broader picture is what we need.
- Strong SQL skills and a solid grasp of relational data modeling.
- Excellent problem solving, communication, and documentation skills.
Preferred
- Hands on experience with PostgreSQL logical replication, streaming replication, and change data capture such as Debezium.
- Production experience with Kafka, Kinesis, or other event streaming platforms.
- Experience with Redis or ElastiCache as a caching layer in front of PostgreSQL.
- Infrastructure as code experience such as Terraform or CloudFormation.
- CI/CD tooling such as Jenkins, GitLab CI, or AWS CodePipeline.
- Exposure to other data stores such as DynamoDB, Redshift, OpenSearch, or MongoDB for context on polyglot persistence.
- Healthcare technology or regulated industry experience.
- AWS certifications such as Solutions Architect or Database Specialty, or PostgreSQL certifications.
- Active, daily use of AI tools such as Claude, Copilot, ChatGPT, or Cursor for scripting, troubleshooting, and documentation.
Physical Requirements
- 90% Desk work
- 10% Remote travel to client sites, conferences, or internal team meetings
#LI-GF1 #LI-Remote
Benefits
- Competitive compensation, with a base salary of $130,000 - $150,000 (Exact compensation may vary based on skills and experience)
- Eligible for Company Performance-based Bonus Program, based on individual and company performance
- Medical, dental, and vision insurance
- 401K eligible after 3 months of employment, with 50% company match up to first 5% of salary contributed to the plan with a 3-year vesting schedule
- HSA for eligible employees enrolled in the HDHP, with a generous company contribution up to $500 for individual coverage and $1000 for family coverage per year
- 100% company paid short and long-term disability, AD&D, and group life insurance
- Accrued annual paid time off (PTO) of 18 days for the first 3 years of service, increasing thereafter and 7 paid holiday days
- Employee Assistance Program
- Continuing Education funds up to $1500 annually for eligible programs after 1 year of service
- Voluntary benefits including FSA, Hospital indemnity, Accident and Critical Illness insurances
DrFirst is committed to being a Remote-First company, creating a dynamic and flexible workplace where everyone can thrive, no matter where they log in from. Check out our approach to remote work: https://drfirst.com/company/about-us/careers/.
Our recruitment process at DrFirst is straightforward and secure. You will only be contacted by our recruitment team through an official @drfirst.com email address. We will never ask you for payment or sensitive personal information, such as your social security number or banking details, at any stage of the hiring process. Additionally, we will not request that you purchase equipment or accept e-checks or checks for deposit. If you encounter any communications claiming to be from DrFirst that seem suspicious, please contact our recruitment team directly at [email protected] to verify the message's authenticity. Your security is important to us!
Learn more about our benefits and professional development opportunities: https://drfirst.com/company/about-us/careers/the-perks/.