Software Engineer, Database Infra
Hybrid (San Francisco)$190.7k - $325kFull-timePosted 7mo ago
About the role
Staff Database Engineer responsible for defining and evolving Harvey's global PostgreSQL-based database infrastructure, including migration governance, multi-region scaling, reliability, and tooling. Leadership role with hands-on execution and collaboration with Principal and Staff Engineers.
Responsibilities
- Migration Governance – Own the migration governance framework end-to-end—design the review workflow, CI gate checks, automated rollback procedures, and fleet-wide deployment sequencing that makes safe migrations the default across the org
- Architecture & Scaling – Drive the technical strategy for Harvey’s global database fleet—multi-region replication design, capacity planning, sharding and partitioning approaches, and fleet-wide observability as we scale into new markets
- Reliability & Performance – Own database reliability and performance at the fleet level—monitoring replication health, optimizing query performance, tuning vacuum and connection management, and building the alerting that gives us confidence across all production environments
- Platform & Tooling – Build self-service tooling and developer guardrails—migration dry-runs, schema diff previews, automated health checks, performance regression detection—so engineering teams can move fast without bottlenecking on a single DBA
- Incident Leadership – Lead database incident response and drive systemic improvements—triage production issues, run post-incident reviews, and turn lessons learned into durable process and tooling fixes
Qualifications
- 10+ years of hands-on experience in database administration, database reliability engineering, or infrastructure engineering with PostgreSQL as your primary database, with demonstrated staff-level scope
- Expert-level PostgreSQL knowledge (required)—WAL mechanics, vacuum tuning, logical and physical replication, partitioning strategies
- Track record of building migration governance systems—not just reviewing migrations, but designing the frameworks, tooling, and organizational processes
- Experience architecting database infrastructure for multi-region, high-availability environments—replication topologies, failover automation, and data consistency trade-offs at fleet scale
- Deep fluency with database observability—you’ve built monitoring strategies using Datadog, pganalyze, or custom instrumentation
- Experience leading database major version upgrades (e.g., PostgreSQL 14 → 16) or sharding initiatives in production with zero downtime
- Proficiency with cloud database services at scale (Azure Database for PostgreSQL, GCP Cloud SQL, or AWS RDS/Aurora) and infrastructure-as-code (Terraform, Pulumi)
- Clear communication across audiences—you can present a database architecture decision to the VP of Engineering and explain a migration risk to a junior developer with equal clarity
Skills
Required:PostgreSQLMigration GovernanceMulti-region ArchitectureObservability & MonitoringCloud Database Services & IaCLeadership & Influence
Benefits
- Comprehensive health, dental and vision coverage
- 401k with match up to 4%
- flexible PTO
- Equity participation
- Relocation assistance (for San Francisco, CA role)
Last updated Sep 23, 2026. Interested? Apply on the company site.
About Harvey
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