Sr. Database Site Reliability Engineer (DB SRE)

Sr. Database Site Reliability Engineer (DB SRE)

McKesson is an impact-driven, Fortune 10 company that touches virtually every aspect of healthcare. We are known for delivering insights, products, and services that make quality care more accessible and affordable. Here, we focus on the health, happiness, and well-being of you and those we serve – we care.

What you do at McKesson matters. We foster a culture where you can grow, make an impact, and are empowered to bring new ideas. Together, we thrive as we shape the future of health for patients, our communities, and our people. If you want to be part of tomorrow's health today, we want to hear from you.

The Sr. Database Site Reliability Engineer (DB SRE) is responsible for owning the reliability, availability, and operational maturity of business-critical Azure PostgreSQL platforms supporting the CoverMyMeds (CMM) platform. This role applies Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) principles to database services, emphasizing automation, Infrastructure as Code, observability, and resilience in a modern cloud-native environment.

This role sits within Platform Core Engineering, partnering closely with application, platform, security, and network engineering teams. In this environment, there is no separate DBA team – the DB SRE owns database reliability end-to-end across development, staging, and production.

Candidates who reside in the Columbus, OH metropolitan area will be given priority. This role will allow for remote work.

We are unable to provide sponsorship for this role presently or in the future.

Key Responsibilities

• Own and continuously improve the reliability, availability, and performance of Azure PostgreSQL platforms across dev, stage, and prod
• Design, build, and operate cloud database infrastructure using Infrastructure as Code (Terraform)
• Apply SRE principles to stateful systems, including environment isolation, blast-radius reduction, and automation-first operations
• Define and implement database observability (metrics, logs, dashboards, alerts) using enterprise monitoring tools (e.g., Datadog)
• Lead incident response for database-related production issues and participate in on-call rotations
• Troubleshoot complex issues across performance, replication, connectivity, failover, and permissions
• Define and validate high availability, backup, restore, disaster recovery, and point-in-time recovery (PITR) strategies
• Enforce least-privilege access, support audits, and ensure compliance with security and governance requirements
• Collaborate with platform, application, security, and network teams to design scalable, secure database architectures
• Provide senior technical leadership, set reliability standards, and mentor less-experienced engineers

Career Level Summary

This is a senior individual contributor role operating in a highly visible, business-critical environment. The Sr. DB SRE is expected to work with a high degree of autonomy, influence platform standards, and raise the reliability and operational maturity of the database platform. While not a people manager, the role provides technical leadership and guidance across the broader SRE and platform engineering organization.

Minimum Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree preferred; relevant experience considered in lieu of degree
• Typically 7+ years of relevant experience in SRE, platform, or infrastructure engineering roles

Critical Skills (Required)

• 7+ years hands-on experience operating PostgreSQL databases in cloud environments (Azure strongly preferred)
• Strong production experience (7+ years) supporting high-availability, business-critical database platforms
• Deep expertise with Infrastructure as Code, particularly Terraform
• Experience owning or participating in on-call rotations and incident response
• Strong understanding of database operations, including performance tuning, replication, backup/restore, and recovery
• Experience designing and operating database observability and monitoring solutions
• Solid knowledge of cloud security principles, including least-privilege access and audit readiness
• Proven ability to communicate effectively with technical and non-technical stakeholders

Preferred Skills / Nice to Have

• Background as an SRE with strong database depth (not a traditional DBA role)
• Experience with CI/CD pipelines, Git/GitOps workflows
• Familiarity with Kubernetes (AKS preferred), Helm, and ArgoCD
• Experience operating stateful workloads in Azure cloud environments
• Exposure to regulated or highly controlled environments
• Broader cloud platform experience beyond databases

Why This Role Is Compelling

• High-impact role on a new, cloud-based Azure platform
• True ownership of database reliability with influence over standards and architecture
• Opportunity to shape how SRE practices are applied to stateful, mission-critical systems
• Strong visibility within Platform Engineering and clear technical growth path

We are proud to offer a competitive compensation package at McKesson as part of our Total Rewards. This is determined by several factors, including performance, experience and skills, equity, regular job market evaluations, and geographical markets. The pay range shown below is aligned with McKesson's pay philosophy, and pay will always be compliant with any applicable regulations. In addition to base pay, other compensation, such as an annual bonus or long-term incentive opportunities may be offered.

Our Base Pay Range for this position

$132,400 - $220,600

McKesson has become aware of online recruiting-related scams in which individuals who are not affiliated with or authorized by McKesson are using McKesson's (or affiliated entities, like CoverMyMeds or RxCrossroads) name in fraudulent emails, job postings or social media messages. In light of these scams, please bear the following in mind:McKesson Talent Advisors will never solicit money or credit card information in connection with a McKesson job application.

McKesson Talent Advisors do not communicate with candidates via online chatrooms or using email accounts such as Gmail or Hotmail. Note that McKesson does rely on a virtual assistant (Gia) for certain recruiting-related communications with candidates.

McKesson job postings are posted on our career site: careers.mckesson.com.

McKesson is an Equal Opportunity Employer

McKesson provides equal employment opportunities to applicants and employees, without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, protected veteran status, disability, age, genetic information, or any other legally protected category. For additional information on McKesson's full Equal Employment Opportunity policies, visit our Equal Employment Opportunity page.

McKesson is committed to being an Equal Employment Opportunity Employer and offers opportunities to all job seekers including job seekers with disabilities. If you need a reasonable accommodation to assist with your job search or application for employment, please contact us by sending an email to (United States) View email address on click.appcast.io or (Canada) View email address on click.appcast.io.

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