Senior PostgreSQL Administrator

Employment Type: Permanent Full Time

Position Overview

Wealthsimple is seeking an experienced Senior PostgreSQL Administrator to join our Data Stores team within the Data Foundation team. This role is crucial for designing, implementing, and maintaining our PostgreSQL database environments that support critical financial operations and client data. You will collaborate with engineering and product teams to optimize performance, ensure data integrity, and build scalable solutions. This position requires deep technical expertise in PostgreSQL combined with hands-on development experience for infrastructure automation.

About Wealthsimple

Wealthsimple is on a mission to help everyone achieve financial freedom by simplifying financial management. We leverage smart technology to make financial services transparent and low-cost. As Canada's largest fintech company, we serve over 4 million users and manage more than $70 billion in assets. We foster a culture of collaboration, humility, and continuous improvement, aiming to create inclusive, high-performing teams.

The Data Foundation Team

The Data Foundation team is part of Wealthsimple's Data Platform Engineering organization. It comprises talented software developers and database administrators/developers, divided into three sub-teams:

1. Data Stores Team: Responsible for strengthening our data infrastructure by managing storage systems including Oracle EBS, Aurora Postgres RDS, DynamoDB, and Redis. This team establishes best practices, administers systems, and builds tools to enhance reliability, scalability, and usability.
2. Data Integrations Team: Focuses on improving data accessibility through replication, integrations, tooling, and real-time data access to enable data-driven decision-making.
3. Data Streaming Team: Provides the platform, standards, and tools for leveraging streaming technologies (Kafka, Flink, Temporal) in a reliable, secure, and scalable manner.

Responsibilities

In this role, you will:

• Design, implement, and maintain PostgreSQL database infrastructure across development, testing, and production environments.
• Monitor database performance and implement optimizations to improve query efficiency.
• Develop and maintain backup/recovery procedures and ensure data integrity.
• Implement and manage database security measures, including access controls and encryption.
• Create Python scripts for database automation, monitoring, and maintenance tasks.
• Collaborate with engineering teams to optimize database schemas and queries.
• Provide guidance on database best practices and participate in code reviews.
• Plan and execute database upgrades and migrations with minimal downtime.
• Create and maintain comprehensive documentation for database architecture and procedures.
• Participate in an on-call rotation for database-related issues.

Skills We Are Looking For

• 5+ years of hands-on PostgreSQL administration experience in production environments.
• Proficient in Python scripting for database automation and management tasks.
• Strong understanding of PostgreSQL internals, optimization, and performance tuning.
• Experience with high-availability PostgreSQL deployments and disaster recovery strategies.
• Knowledge of database security best practices and compliance requirements.
• Experience with database monitoring, alerting, and troubleshooting.
• Solid understanding of indexing strategies, query optimization, and execution plans.
• Familiarity with PostgreSQL extensions and their applications.
• Knowledge of cloud-based PostgreSQL implementations (AWS Aurora RDS).
• Familiarity with Terraform and GitHub.
• Experience with infrastructure-as-code and database change management.

Application Instructions

• Information not provided in the original job description.

Company Information

• Information not provided in the original job description.