Database Infrastructure Engineer - Engine by Starling

At Engine by Starling, we are on a mission to find and work with leading banks all around the world who have the ambition to build rapid growth businesses, on our technology. 

Engine is Starling's software-as-a-service (SaaS) business, the technology that was built to power Starling Bank, and two years ago we split out as a separate business. 

Starling Bank has seen exceptional growth and success, and a large part of that is down to the fact that we have built our own modern technology from the ground up. This SaaS technology platform is now available to banks and financial institutions all around the world, enabling them to benefit from the innovative digital features, and efficient back-office processes that has helped achieve Starling's success.

We draw upon our experience as knowledgeable bankers, and best in class technologists to become the chosen option for these banks, and preferred partners for leading consultancies.

As a company, everyone is expected to roll up their sleeves to help deliver great outcomes for our clients. We are an engineering led company and we’re looking for someone who will be excited by the potential for Engine’s technology to transform banking in different markets around the world.

Hybrid Working

We have a Hybrid approach to working here at Engine - our preference is that you're located within a commutable distance of one of our offices so that we're able to interact and collaborate in person. We don't like to mandate how much you visit the office and work from home, that's to be agreed upon between you and your manager. 

Our Engineering Environment

Engine Engineers are excited about helping us deliver new features, regardless of what their primary tech stack may be. Hear from the team in our latest blogs or our case studies with Women in Tech.

We are looking for engineers at all levels to join the team. We value people being engaged and caring about customers, caring about the code they write and the contribution they make to Engine. People with a broad ability to apply themselves to a multitude of problems and challenges, who can work across teams do great things here at Engine, to continue changing banking for good.

We have built our entire banking platform in house and mostly in Java. We are looking for people who want to work on building the tooling that is used by our engineers on a daily basis.

We are looking for

Ideally, you will be an inquisitive Engineer, with an aptitude for finding clean and simple solutions to technical problems. You will be passionate about running observable and reliable database infrastructure that underpins the entire Engine technology platform.

We are also on the lookout for Database Engineers - we will be starting to hire for these roles in the near future.

The ideal candidate will have experience with:

• Database design and architecture
• Performance tuning
• Backup and recovery
• Security
• Cloud database infrastructure management on AWS/GCP using Infrastructure as Code
• Managing large database environments, preferably with Postgres
• Monitoring and alerting
• A proven track record of working closely with software engineers

You will

• Monitor and optimise the performance of our ever growing PostgreSQL database estate by working closely with our technology teams to understand the workloads
• Keep our database estate up to date - both from a vulnerability management and supported Postgres version point of view
• Managing and monitoring data replication
• Lead regular disaster recovery testing initiatives
• Own and improve technical documentation and processes for database tasks - enabling teams to self help with e.g. allocating system storage and planning storage needs; performing upgrades; optimising database queries
• Own and improve monitoring dashboards and alerts
• Contribute to the development of our in-house developed database manager tooling that’s responsible for performing all DBA related tasks without ever having to log into a database via the command line in production
• Own cost optimisation - reviewing and proposing recommendations for optimising database footprint, including reserved instance lifecycle management 
• Embrace automation and be reluctant for manual implementation
• Implement security best practices
• Demonstrate knowledge of new technologies and changes in the industry
• Ensure platform compliance with ISO27001, SOC2 and PCI-DSS

• An aptitude for thinking out of the box
• Experience with AWS, GCP or other cloud environments
• Understanding of database monitoring, analysis, disaster recovery and performance tuning
• Proven experience working as a DBA from a performance tuning and optimisation perspective
• Built and deployed PostgreSQL clusters into production (would consider Oracle/MySQL and similar technologies)
• Experience working with AWS RDS Postgres or GCP Cloud SQL databases
• Knowledge of Postgres configuration settings
• An understanding of Postgres’ vacuum/MVCC process 
• Worked within high availability, scalable environments
• Ability to engage with all levels of the business to understand user needs
• Strong ability to solve complex technical issues

Interview process

Interviewing is a two way process and we want you to have the time and opportunity to get to know us, as much as we are getting to know you! Our interviews are conversational and we want to get the best from you, so come with questions and be curious. In general you can expect the below, following a chat with one of our Talent Team:

• Stage 1 - 30 mins with an Engineer
• Stage 2 - 120 mins technical interview with two team members 
• Stage 3 - 45 min final with an executive