Principal Database Reliability Engineer

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Principal Database Reliability Engineer (DBRE) - Enterprise Data Platform

OpenSearch Anchor Expertise | Enterprise Architecture | Distributed Systems | Automation | Strategy

Level

Principal DBRE

Domain

Enterprise Data Infrastructure and Multi-Paradigm Data Platforms

Primary Focus

Enterprise technical direction anchored in OpenSearch, distributed-systems reliability, automation platforms, cross-domain architecture, and multi-year strategy

Work Expectations

U.S. Eastern Time business hours; on-call participation as required

1. Role Summary

We are seeking a hands-on Principal DBRE to serve as the highest individual-contributor technical authority for enterprise data-platform reliability and architecture. OpenSearch/Elasticsearch is the required anchor expertise. The role also requires strong breadth across distributed and relational data technologies, automation, observability, capacity, resilience, and technology strategy.

The Principal DBRE defines multi-year direction, resolves consequential cross-domain architecture issues, establishes enterprise engineering principles, and influences senior engineering and executive leadership. The role guides domain specialists without requiring the individual to be the deepest expert in every database engine.

2. Level Scope and Leadership Expectations

Principal DBRE is an executive-adjacent individual-contributor technical leadership role. The Principal establishes enterprise direction across multiple platform domains, resolves the most consequential architecture and reliability problems, and creates standards and investment priorities that scale across the organization.

Dimension

Expectation at This Level

Scope of Ownership

Shapes enterprise reliability, scalability, resilience, security, cost, and lifecycle direction across distributed and relational data-platform families.

Anchor Technical Depth

Serves as a recognized authority in OpenSearch/Elasticsearch and distributed-systems architecture, with enough depth to lead the most consequential technical decisions.

Cross-Domain Breadth

Demonstrates strong experience in at least two complementary domains such as Kafka, Redis, PostgreSQL, or Oracle, and can guide specialists across unfamiliar technologies.

Strategic Leadership

Defines multi-year architecture principles, technical roadmaps, production-readiness expectations, and investment priorities aligned with business needs.

Organizational Influence

Builds alignment across senior engineers, leaders, platform teams, and application organizations through clear tradeoffs, evidence, and measurable outcomes.

Platform Engineering

Champions reusable automation, observability, governance, and self-service capabilities as enterprise platform products.

3. Key Responsibilities

A. Enterprise Data-Platform Architecture

• Define enterprise architecture principles and target-state direction anchored in OpenSearch and distributed-systems reliability.
• Guide cross-domain decisions spanning search, streaming, caching, and relational services without displacing domain specialists.
• Resolve architecture conflicts involving scalability, resilience, operability, security, cost, data movement, and lifecycle constraints.

B. Reliability and Resilience Strategy

• Establish enterprise production-readiness, SLI/SLO, backup, recovery, DR, capacity, lifecycle, and incident-learning principles.
• Lead the technical response and systemic review for the most consequential multi-platform failures.
• Translate recurring incidents and platform risks into architecture safeguards and prioritized investment roadmaps.

C. Automation and Platform Engineering

• Define the strategy for shared Python automation platforms, operational APIs/CLIs, CI/CD guardrails, validation frameworks, safe remediation, and Infrastructure as Code.
• Promote self-service and platform-as-a-product practices that reduce toil while preserving change safety and accountability.

D. Technology Strategy and Organizational Influence

• Lead workload-relevant evaluation of emerging technologies, including operability, failure behavior, migration risk, performance, and total cost.
• Partner with senior engineering and executive leadership on multi-year technical direction, platform investments, and modernization decisions.
• Mentor Staff and Lead engineers, cultivate technical leadership, and improve architecture-review and decision-making quality.

4. Required Qualifications and Experience

• 12+ years of relevant database, DBRE, SRE, platform, or distributed-systems engineering experience with Principal, Staff, Lead, or comparable technical leadership responsibility.
• Expert-level OpenSearch and/or Elasticsearch architecture and production operations experience.
• Strong distributed-systems reasoning and meaningful production experience in at least two of Kafka, Redis, PostgreSQL, or Oracle.
• Strong software-engineering and automation capability, preferably Python-based platform tooling and APIs.
• Proven ability to define multi-year technical direction, resolve cross-domain architecture problems, and influence senior engineering and executive stakeholders.
• Deep understanding of reliability, capacity, observability, lifecycle management, DR, security, and cost tradeoffs.
• Excellent written communication, technical judgment, mentorship, and organizational influence.

5. Preferred Qualifications

• Breadth across both distributed and relational database technologies.
• Kubernetes stateful platforms, cloud-managed data services, hybrid architectures, and Infrastructure as Code.
• Experience with ClickHouse, Pinot, vector databases, NewSQL, stream processing, or similar emerging technologies.
• Experience influencing vendors or open-source communities and guiding major modernization programs.

6. Expected Outcomes in the First 6-12 Months

• Deliver an evidence-based enterprise data-platform architecture and reliability roadmap with clear priorities, ownership, and investment tradeoffs.
• Establish measurable baselines and lead material improvements in cross-platform reliability, MTTR, capacity risk, operational toil, and recovery readiness.
• Define and gain adoption of shared production-readiness, architecture-review, automation, and lifecycle-management principles.
• Guide at least one consequential platform modernization or technology decision from evaluation through an approved and supportable execution plan.
• Develop Staff and Lead technical leadership and improve cross-organizational architecture decision quality.

7. What This Role Does Not Include

• This is not a people-management role unless separately assigned.
• The Principal DBRE is not expected to be the deepest hands-on expert in every database technology; OpenSearch is the anchor expertise, supported by credible cross-domain breadth.
• This role does not replace Staff, Lead, or domain-specific subject-matter experts and operational owners.
• This role is not an executive approval authority; decisions are shaped through technical evidence, influence, and established governance.
• This role does not personally own every incident, implementation task, or operational detail; it focuses on the highest-impact cross-domain problems and systemic outcomes.

8. Work Expectations and Location

This role requires working during U.S. Eastern Time (ET) business hours and participating in on-call support as required.