Sr. Database Reliability Engineer II

Responsibilities

• Design and evolve MySQL schemas for high-volume transactional workloads.
• Improve database platform architecture through online schema changes, low-downtime migrations, blue/green deployments, and scalability initiatives.
• Analyze and optimize SQL queries, indexes, execution plans, transactions, locking, and concurrency.
• Develop production software, reusable libraries, frameworks, and developer tooling for data access and platform capabilities.
• Design scalable data models and establish standards for schema design, indexing, SQL development, migrations, and data access.
• Lead database performance tuning, modernization, architecture reviews, and technical initiatives across engineering teams.
• Investigate and resolve complex application and database performance, integrity, and production reliability issues.
• Partner with Platform Engineering on monitoring, backups, disaster recovery, observability, and operational resilience.
• Use Google Cloud services to improve data platform reliability, scalability, and observability.
• Mentor engineers and serve as a technical advisor on database architecture, application performance, and data platform practices.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or a related technical field, or equivalent practical experience.
• 8+ years of professional software engineering experience.
• Strong backend application development experience with Java, C#, Go, Python, Kotlin, Scala, or similar modern languages.
• Expert-level MySQL experience in large-scale production environments.
• Deep knowledge of SQL optimization, query execution plans, indexing, transactions, isolation levels, locking, concurrency, schema design, normalization, replication, and high availability.
• Experience designing scalable schemas for high-volume transactional applications and troubleshooting complex application and database performance issues.
• Experience implementing database migration strategies for continuous delivery.
• Strong understanding of software architecture, distributed systems, and engineering best practices.
• Experience leading technical initiatives and influencing architectural decisions across engineering teams.
• Strong collaboration and communication skills, including the ability to explain complex technical concepts.
• Experience or passion for building automation, developer tooling, database testing frameworks, performance benchmarking harnesses, and engineering practices.
• Preferred experience with Google Cloud Platform, Cloud SQL for MySQL, observability, highly available distributed systems, financial services or trading platforms, high-growth engineering environments, and AI/ML tools for development or operations.

Benefits

• Chicago-based hybrid schedule with in-office work Tuesday through Thursday and remote work Monday and Friday.
• 20 additional flex remote days annually and five company-wide office-optional weeks tied to major holidays.
• Remote flexibility may be available for exceptional candidates in listed states.
• Salary range of $130,000.00-$180,000.00 USD plus a 10% annual target bonus.
• 401(k) plan with up to a 3.5% company match.
• 18 days of annual PTO accrual, seven paid holidays, five conditional holidays, and one service day.
• Paid parental bonding leave and health, vision, dental, life, and disability coverage, with life and disability insurance covered 100% by NinjaTrader.