Sr. Data Infrastructure Engineer

About iSpot

iSpot competes for the best talent. Our compensation packages consist of salary and equity in one of Seattle’s hottest start-ups, as well as other standard benefits. Most importantly, we provide a really interesting working experience, and the chance to contribute to the success of something great.

Position Overview

We are seeking an experienced and highly skilled Senior Data Infrastructure Engineer to lead and manage our MySQL and Snowflake database platforms, with additional support for Amazon Redshift. In this role, you will be responsible for the maintenance, administration, upgrades and migration of the databases to support high-performance, scalable, and secure data solutions. You will play a strategic and hands-on role in scaling our data infrastructure, optimizing performance, and ensuring the reliability and security of our mission-critical systems. You will collaborate with cross-functional teams to ensure database systems meet the needs of the organization and maintain optimal performance and reliability.

Key Responsibilities

Database Design and Architecture

• Develop and enforce database standards, best practices, and security protocols.

Performance Tuning and Optimization

• Monitor and analyze database performance, identifying bottlenecks and implementing solutions to improve efficiency.
• Perform query optimization and tuning for complex workloads.
• Manage database caching, indexing, and resource allocation.

Data Management and Integration

• Collaborate with data engineering teams to ensure seamless integration between data sources, warehouses, and applications.
• Manage data lifecycle policies, including archiving and purging.

Access, Maintenance and Operations

• Administer and optimize environments including user access, roles, resource monitors, and cost controls.
• Implement and manage backup and recovery strategies wherever needed and applicable.
• Implement robust backup and disaster recovery strategies.
• Ensure database systems are highly available and resilient, including configuring replication and clustering as needed.
• Perform routine maintenance tasks such as patching, upgrades, and storage management.
• Automate database operations using scripts and tools.

Monitoring and Security

• Implement monitoring solutions to proactively detect and resolve database issues.
• Ensure compliance with data security policies and regulatory requirements.
• Manage access controls, encryption, and auditing for database environments.

Collaboration and Leadership

• Provide guidance and mentorship to junior team members.
• Collaborate with software developers, data engineers, and analysts to align database solutions with business needs.
• Participate in capacity planning, budgeting, and strategic decision-making for database technologies.

Snowflake Specific Responsibilities

• Collaborate with data engineers and analytics teams to support ELT/ETL pipelines.
• Monitor usage and implement cost governance policies for Snowflake workloads.

Required Qualifications

Education

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, or related field. Equivalent experience will also be considered.

Experience

• Minimum 7+ years of experience managing databases, with at least 3 years specializing in MySQL, Snowflake and Redshift Spectrum.

Skills and Knowledge

• Proficiency in database administration, including replication, clustering, and high availability.
• Expertise in MySQL, Snowflake, Amazon Redshift and Redshift Spectrum, including query tuning, partitioning, and data lake integration.
• Strong understanding of SQL and database internals, including storage engines and query execution plans.
• Experience with data pipeline tools (e.g., Apache Airflow, AWS Glue).
• Knowledge of monitoring tools (e.g., CloudWatch, Prometheus) and scripting languages (e.g., Python, Bash).
• Familiarity with cloud infrastructure, particularly AWS (S3, Lambda, IAM, etc.).

Preferred Qualifications

• AWS certifications (e.g., AWS Certified Solutions Architect, AWS Certified)