At Springer Nature (Permanent), in Lisbon, Portugal Expires at: 2024-06-17 Remote policy: Partial remote We're looking for a Database Engineer with significant PostgreSQL experience who will help us fulfil our mission to enable product teams to focus on delivering value. About us: Engineering Enablement The Engineering Enablement (EE) department consists of around 60 people spread over teams that closely collaborate to fulfil our mission. In Springer Nature Technology (SNT) we serve different core expertise: PaaS, Databases, Observability and Cloud- and Release Engineering. You will join a multidisciplinary team with different nationalities, backgrounds and experience levels. We are a very distributed department but sometimes we travel to work with each other in person. We are based around the globe with main locations in London, Dordrecht, Berlin, Lisbon and New York. Our Technology We have built platforms serving hundreds of developers at scale around the world. We are making more and more use of Kubernetes as a backend container platform and integrating this into our platform offering. We are leveraging the power of Kubernetes to build a new PaaS that will co-exist with the current Cloud Foundry Platform, as well as managing an internal database platform that runs over 1,500 database servers. Your team This role is within the Database Engineering team, which is responsible for providing a managed database platform in a rapidly evolving and dynamic environment. The team consists of Platform and Database Engineers who work together to provide managed database services and the underlying cloud-based infrastructure for internal customers across the organisation. Your responsibility Together with the team, you will share the responsibility of provisioning, configuring and maintaining databases across multiple platforms. Along with your team members, you provide expert services and guidance to development and product teams across Springer Nature. As a Postgres expert, developers will turn to you for support, guidance and assistance from initial provisioning to performance optimization. Your main technical focus will be on PostgreSQL, but you will also have the opportunity to work with additional technologies, including MySQL, MongoDB, Oracle, MarkLogic, and vector databases. You will use existing automation tools (based on Ansible) and improve them to manage our large number of servers and database instances. Key Tasks: Maintaining and improving the database systems in production and development environments, with a focus on PostgreSQL. Provisioning, configuring, patching, upgrading, and maintaining PostgreSQL databases in multiple platforms. Automating the management of new and existing databases to ensure that processes are repeatable and scalable. Monitoring and optimizing database performance, including configuration, resource usage and query tuning. Ensuring high availability of databases through clustering, replication, and other techniques. Taking an active role in supporting and in finding the root cause of operational issues and preventing recurrences. Working with the team to document processes, procedures, and technical designs related to database management. Main requirements About you You are a friendly team member who is modest and humble, open to learning from anyone regardless of age, gender, race, role or experience. You value social interactions and can self-reflect by asking questions. You are self-confident and smart but never a smart-ass. You strongly prefer working together, sharing knowledge and training others instead of quickly getting things done alone. Desired Skills and Experience: Advanced knowledge of PostgreSQL Familiarity with one or more of the following technologies with a desire to expand on this knowledge: MySQL, MongoDB, Oracle, MarkLogic, or Pinecone Strong understanding of database architecture, backup and recovery, and performance tuning. Experience with database clustering and replication mechanisms. Familiarity with cloud-based database platforms, ideally GCP. Excellent communication and collaboration skills. Experience in automation and configuration management, preferably with Ansible. Preferred Skills and Experience: Unix shell scripting or programming experience. Experience with vector databases Experience using the Google Cloud Platform Experience working with Google BigQuery Experience of working with Cloud SQL High user and customer orientation High sensitivity for security-relevant issues.
