Lead Database Engineer

Here at Appian, our values of Intensity and Excellence define who we are. We set high standards and live up to them, ensuring that everything we do is done with care and quality. We approach every challenge with ambition and commitment, holding ourselves and each other accountable to achieve the best results. When you join Appian, you’ll be part of a passionate team dedicated to accomplishing hard things, together.

Database Engineers in Appian’s Public Sector Customer Success department build the scalable foundation behind mission-critical systems that power the world’s most demanding enterprises and government organizations.

Location: McLean, VA |
Work Model: In-Office / Hybrid

Appian’s Customer Success Public Sector team builds mission driven solutions that ensure peak performance, high availability, and data security for key Department of War (DoW) initiatives. We empower government organizations to modernize legacy systems using AI-Powered Process Automation and Enterprise-Grade Orchestration, ensuring seamless data access at scale.

As a Database Engineer, you will design, develop, and maintain a complex data architecture to support our long-term DoW efforts. With extensive experience with Relational Database Management Services (RDMS) and No

SQL databases, you will architect a data architecture for the program that will be capable of handling extremely large datasets, migrate legacy data into the modern architecture, and ensure high availability and performance for the systems being implemented.

• Design and develop database architectures and data models to support the customer’s contract requirements by working closely with the Appian team to build logical and physical data models.
• Analyze legacy database structures to identify incompatibilities, data type mismatches, and migration risks before moving workloads to the cloud.
• Convert legacy stored procedures, triggers, views, and functions into target-compatible languages (such as PL/SQL or SQL), rewriting logic.
• Identify and update hardcoded SQL queries within application source code to ensure compatibility with the new database engine.
• Establish ETL functions to clean, transform, and transport legacy data into the new application environment.
• Configure, implement, and monitor enterprise database clusters
• Tune database objects for performance, and create indices on tables as needed.
• Integrate existing and new database objects into CI/CD pipelines to improve code reliability and consistency.
• Set up source control for database architecture code, stored procedures, and ETL objects.
• Develop complex data generation scripts used for automated functional and performance testing efforts.

• Bachelor’s Degree: B.S. or B.A. in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Systems, Mathematics, or a related technical field. (
  
  Note:
  
  Degree is strictly required).
• Experience: 5+ years of professional experience in data engineering, including hands‑on experience designing, planning, and implementing tables, views, stored procedures, and functions.
• Core Technical
  
  Skills:
  
  Deep proficiency in both relational (RDBMS) and No
  
  SQL database technologies, along with mastery of query languages including SQL, MQL, and CQL.
• Database Platforms: Professional experience designing, planning, and implementing new stored procedures, views, tables, and functions specified by business requirements.
• Core Technical
  
  Skills:
  
  Strong proficiency in both SQL and No
  
  SQL database languages including SQL, MQL, CQL, etc. Hands‑on experience technologies such as Microsoft SQL Server, MariaDB, Postgres, Oracle and AWS Cloud, Snowflake, Data Bricks.
• Security & Clearance: Active DoD Secret Clearance (or ability to obtain). Must be a U.S. Citizen (required for Public Sector efforts).
• Travel: Willingness to travel up to 10% annually for customer engagement.

• Cloud & Security
  
  Certifications:
  
  AWS Certified Database Specialty, AWS Certified Solutions Architect, CompTIA Security+, or platform‑specific certifications from Oracle or Microsoft.
• Migration Expertise: Demonstrated experience migrating complex schemas across database engines…