Senior Database Reliability Engineer; DBRE

Senior Database Reliability Engineer (DBRE)

Join to apply for the Senior Database Reliability Engineer (DBRE) role at Okta for Developers.

Experience Level: Mid–Senior (4+ years Postgre

SQL experience).

About The Role:

We are looking for a highly skilled Database Reliability Engineer (DBRE) with deep expertise in Postgre

SQL at scale and solid experience with MySQL. In this role, you will design, operationalize, and optimize the data persistence layer that powers our large‑scale, mission‑critical systems. You’ll work closely with SRE, Platform, and Engineering teams to ensure performance, reliability, automation, and operational excellence across our database environment.

This is a hands‑on engineering role focused on building resilient data infrastructure, not just administering it.

• Design, implement, and operate highly available Postgre
  
  SQL clusters (physical replication, logical replication, sharding/partitioning, failover automation).
• Optimize query performance, indexing strategies, schema design, and storage engines.
• Perform capacity planning, growth forecasting, and workload modeling.
• Own high‑availability strategies including automatic failover, multi‑AZ/multi‑region setups, and disaster recovery.
• Develop automation for provisioning, configuration, backups, failovers, vacuum tuning, schema management using Terraform, Ansible, Kubernetes Operators, or custom tooling.
• Build monitoring, alerting, and self‑healing systems for Postgre
  
  SQL and MySQL.
• Lead response during database incidents—performance regressions, replication lag, deadlocks, bloat issues, storage failures, etc.
• Conduct root‑cause analysis and implement permanent fixes.
• Partner with software engineers to review SQL, optimize schemas, and ensure efficient use of Postgre
  
  SQL features.
• Provide guidance on database‑related design patterns, migrations, version upgrades, and best practices.

• 4+ years of hands‑on Postgre
  
  SQL experience in high‑volume, distributed, or large‑scale production environments.
• Strong knowledge of Postgre
  
  SQL internals (WAL, MVCC, bloat/vacuum tuning, query planner, indexing, logical replication).
• Production experience with MySQL (InnoDB internals, replication, performance tuning).
• Advanced SQL and strong understanding of schema design and query optimization.
• Experience with Linux systems, networking fundamentals, and systems troubleshooting.
• Experience building automation with Go or Python.
• Production experience with monitoring tools (Prometheus, Grafana, Datadog, PMM, _statements, etc.).
• Hands‑on experience with cloud environments (AWS or GCP).

• Experience with PgBouncer, HAProxy, or other connection‑pooling/load‑balancing layers.
• Exposure to event streaming (Kafka, Debezium) and change data capture.
• Experience supporting 24/7 production environments with on‑call rotation.
• Contributions to open‑source Postgre
  
  SQL ecosystem.

Required federal access:
This position requires the ability to access federal environments and/or protected federal data. Successful candidate must submit documentation establishing U.S. Person status upon hire.

Requires in‑person onboarding and travel to our San Francisco, CA HQ office or our Chicago office during the first week of employment.

Requisition :

Annual base salary range for this position:
San Francisco Bay area: $152,000—$228,000 USD. California (excluding San Francisco Bay Area), Colorado, Illinois, New York, and Washington: $136,000—$204,000 USD.

Benefits: health, dental, vision insurance, 401(k), flexible spending account, paid leave (including PTO and parental leave), equity (where applicable), and bonus. (Full benefits details: )

• Amazing benefits.
• Making social impact.
• Developing talent and fostering connection & community at Okta.

Okta is an Equal Opportunity Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, ancestry, marital status, age, physical or mental disability, or status as a protected veteran. We also consider qualified applicants with arrest and convictions records, consistent with applicable laws.

For reasonable accommodation requests, please use this form: