{"schemaVersion":"jobsearcher.job.v1","id":"90beaee224573ec6bca492ce","url":"https://jobsearcher.com/jobs/90beaee224573ec6bca492ce","canonicalUrl":"https://jobsearcher.com/jobs/90beaee224573ec6bca492ce","title":"Senior PostgreSQL Database Administrator / Database Engineer","description":"Company: tastytrade\n\nRole: Senior PostgreSQL Database Administrator / Database Engineer\n\nLocation: Chicago, IL — Hybrid\n\nAbout the Role\n\nAs a Senior PostgreSQL Database Administrator / Database Engineer, you'll own the health, performance, and durability of high-throughput Postgres clusters running both on bare metal / on-prem VMs and on Amazon RDS. This is a hands-on role: you will read query plans, tune indexes, run failover drills, review application code, and write high-quality documentation.\n\nThis is not a ticket-queue DBA position. You will work inside the development process — reviewing migrations before they ship, pairing with application teams on data access patterns, assisting with performance troubleshooting, and contributing to incident resolution and process improvement.\n\nWhat You'll Do:\n\nOwn performance for high-volume OLTP Postgres workloads: query plan analysis, index strategy, statistics and autovacuum tuning, connection pooling, partitioning, and schema design review.\nDesign, deploy, and operate highly available clusters using Patroni, including replication topology, failover and switchover procedures, and regular testing.\nOwn the backup and recovery program end to end — backup tooling, retention, PITR, and, most importantly, routine restore verification with documented RTO/RPO.\nManage Postgres in both on-prem and Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL environments, including the operational differences between them (parameter groups, extension availability, failover behavior, upgrade paths).\nPlan and execute major-version upgrades and large migrations with minimal downtime.\nReview application code and database migrations written in Ruby (Rails/ActiveRecord) and Java (JDBC), catching N+1 queries, unsafe DDL, missing indexes, and lock-taking migrations before they reach production.\nBuild and maintain observability for the database tier: metrics, slow query capture, lock and wait-event analysis, and capacity forecasting.\nAutomate routine operations. Manual runbooks are a starting point, not a destination.\nParticipate in an on-call rotation: lead incident response, write postmortems, and file follow-up tickets to prevent recurrence.\nWrite and maintain internal documentation: runbooks, architecture decision records, upgrade playbooks, and developer-facing guidance on using Postgres well.\nAssist in sizing and future scaling of on-prem server hardware.\nParticipate in disaster recovery planning and exercises.\n\nWho You Are:\n\nYou have deep PostgreSQL expertise with the query planner — you can read EXPLAIN (ANALYZE, BUFFERS) output and explain why the planner chose a plan, not just that it was slow.\nYou have hands-on indexing strategy experience across B-tree, GIN, GiST, BRIN, partial, expression, and covering indexes, including the write-amplification cost of each.\nYou understand replication — physical and logical replication, replication slots, lag diagnosis, and the failure modes of each.\nYou must have production experience with Patroni-managed clusters, including having handled a real failover.\nYou must have proven ownership of a backup and restore program (pgBackRest, Barman) — including having performed a production restore under pressure.\nYou have experience operating Postgres at meaningful scale in both self-managed (on-prem/VM/bare metal) and managed RDS environments.\nYou must have strong Linux fundamentals: filesystem and I/O behavior, memory and hugepages, systemd, networking, and performance tooling.\nYou have a software development background: creating, reviewing, and merging pull requests as part of a mandatory peer review process, and writing runbooks and design documentation.\nYou have working proficiency in Ruby and Java, with enough Python literacy to read, review, and modify it confidently.\nYou must be an excellent written communicator. Clear incident summaries, review comments, and design proposals are a core part of this job, not an afterthought.\nYou have excellent documentation practice — a demonstrated habit of leaving systems better documented than you found them.\n\nPreferred Qualifications:\n\nExperience with connection poolers (PgBouncer) at scale.\nInfrastructure-as-code and configuration management (Terraform, Ansible, SaltStack, Puppet, etc.).\nKubernetes-hosted Postgres operators.\nActive-active multi-site architecture.\nExperience with logical replication–based zero-downtime migrations.\nContributions to Postgres or its ecosystem tooling.\nFamiliarity with our internal tooling, including [gascan].\n\nCompany Perks + Benefits:\n\nPerformance Bonuses\nStock Purchase Options\nMedical/Vision/Dental Benefits\n401k Plan\n20 Paid Vacation Days (plus an additional paid vacation day the month of your birthday!)\n10 Paid Sick Days\nGym Membership Reimbursement\nCommuter Benefits\nPet Insurance\nWellness & Mental Health Programs\nCharitable Donation Matching\nTwo Paid Volunteer Days Off\nDaily catered lunch when in the office\nFull kitchen with snacks and beverages\nIn-building gym\nShuttle to/from Metra\n\nBase Salary Range: $150,000-$180,000 The actual salary offered will be based on the candidate's level of experience and qualifications.\n\nDiscretionary Performance Bonus: 8-12% of base salary based on individual and company performance.\n\nAbout IGNA + tasty\nIG North America is home to tastytrade, tastylive & tastyfx—a family of brands built to democratize trading and empower individual investors. Founded in Chicago by the creators of thinkorswim, acquired by London-based IG Group in 2021, we combine startup innovation with the backing of a FTSE 100 fintech operating across five continents serving over 1.3m customers and handling billions of dollars in transactions – built on scale, trust, and proof.\n\nFrom our headquarters in Chicago's Fulton Market, our team builds award-winning trading platforms, produces live financial education content daily, and creates technology that makes complex markets accessible. tastytrade is our retail brokerage for self-directed investing and trading, with tastylive providing content to educate our customers. tastyfx is the fastest-growing forex broker in the US. tastycrypto provides self-custody digital wallets for decentralized finance.\n\nWe're a lean, collaborative team that values autonomy, pragmatism, and impact. Whether you're building technology, creating content, serving customers, or supporting operations, you'll work alongside people who are passionate about disrupting traditional finance and genuinely care about helping traders succeed. Our culture rewards initiative, embraces experimentation, and measures success by the value we create for our users. The bar is high – bring a curious and forward-thinking mindset and we'll give you the platform to define what comes next. Join us at IG|tasty – the future gets built here.\n\nLocation: Our office is in the West Loop - Chicago's growing center of tech, great cuisine, and high-end bars.\n\ntastytrade | tastylive | tastyfx\n1330 W Fulton Market, Chicago, IL 60607\n\n*Don't meet every single requirement? Studies have shown that women and people of color are less likely to apply to jobs unless they have every single qualification. Our team is dedicated to building a diverse, inclusive, and authentic workplace, so if you're excited about this role, but your experience doesn't align perfectly, we encourage you to apply anyway. You may be just the right candidate for this or other roles!","company":"Tastytrade","rawCompany":"tastytrade","city":"Chicago","state":"IL","isRemote":false,"isActive":false,"createdAt":"2026-08-31T09:10:32.157Z","occupations":[{"code":"15-1242.00","title":"Database Administrators","slug":"database-administrators"},{"code":"15-1243.00","title":"Database Architects","slug":"database-architects"},{"code":"15-1299.08","title":"Computer Systems Engineers/Architects","slug":"computer-systems-engineers-architects"}],"industries":[{"code":"541512","title":"Computer Systems Design Services","slug":"computer-systems-design-services"},{"code":"541519","title":"Other Computer Related Services","slug":"other-computer-related-services"},{"code":"541511","title":"Custom Computer Programming Services","slug":"custom-computer-programming-services"}],"jobPosting":{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"JobPosting","title":"Senior PostgreSQL Database Administrator / Database Engineer","description":"Company: tastytrade\n\nRole: Senior PostgreSQL Database Administrator / Database Engineer\n\nLocation: Chicago, IL — Hybrid\n\nAbout the Role\n\nAs a Senior PostgreSQL Database Administrator / Database Engineer, you'll own the health, performance, and durability of high-throughput Postgres clusters running both on bare metal / on-prem VMs and on Amazon RDS. This is a hands-on role: you will read query plans, tune indexes, run failover drills, review application code, and write high-quality documentation.\n\nThis is not a ticket-queue DBA position. You will work inside the development process — reviewing migrations before they ship, pairing with application teams on data access patterns, assisting with performance troubleshooting, and contributing to incident resolution and process improvement.\n\nWhat You'll Do:\n\nOwn performance for high-volume OLTP Postgres workloads: query plan analysis, index strategy, statistics and autovacuum tuning, connection pooling, partitioning, and schema design review.\nDesign, deploy, and operate highly available clusters using Patroni, including replication topology, failover and switchover procedures, and regular testing.\nOwn the backup and recovery program end to end — backup tooling, retention, PITR, and, most importantly, routine restore verification with documented RTO/RPO.\nManage Postgres in both on-prem and Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL environments, including the operational differences between them (parameter groups, extension availability, failover behavior, upgrade paths).\nPlan and execute major-version upgrades and large migrations with minimal downtime.\nReview application code and database migrations written in Ruby (Rails/ActiveRecord) and Java (JDBC), catching N+1 queries, unsafe DDL, missing indexes, and lock-taking migrations before they reach production.\nBuild and maintain observability for the database tier: metrics, slow query capture, lock and wait-event analysis, and capacity forecasting.\nAutomate routine operations. Manual runbooks are a starting point, not a destination.\nParticipate in an on-call rotation: lead incident response, write postmortems, and file follow-up tickets to prevent recurrence.\nWrite and maintain internal documentation: runbooks, architecture decision records, upgrade playbooks, and developer-facing guidance on using Postgres well.\nAssist in sizing and future scaling of on-prem server hardware.\nParticipate in disaster recovery planning and exercises.\n\nWho You Are:\n\nYou have deep PostgreSQL expertise with the query planner — you can read EXPLAIN (ANALYZE, BUFFERS) output and explain why the planner chose a plan, not just that it was slow.\nYou have hands-on indexing strategy experience across B-tree, GIN, GiST, BRIN, partial, expression, and covering indexes, including the write-amplification cost of each.\nYou understand replication — physical and logical replication, replication slots, lag diagnosis, and the failure modes of each.\nYou must have production experience with Patroni-managed clusters, including having handled a real failover.\nYou must have proven ownership of a backup and restore program (pgBackRest, Barman) — including having performed a production restore under pressure.\nYou have experience operating Postgres at meaningful scale in both self-managed (on-prem/VM/bare metal) and managed RDS environments.\nYou must have strong Linux fundamentals: filesystem and I/O behavior, memory and hugepages, systemd, networking, and performance tooling.\nYou have a software development background: creating, reviewing, and merging pull requests as part of a mandatory peer review process, and writing runbooks and design documentation.\nYou have working proficiency in Ruby and Java, with enough Python literacy to read, review, and modify it confidently.\nYou must be an excellent written communicator. Clear incident summaries, review comments, and design proposals are a core part of this job, not an afterthought.\nYou have excellent documentation practice — a demonstrated habit of leaving systems better documented than you found them.\n\nPreferred Qualifications:\n\nExperience with connection poolers (PgBouncer) at scale.\nInfrastructure-as-code and configuration management (Terraform, Ansible, SaltStack, Puppet, etc.).\nKubernetes-hosted Postgres operators.\nActive-active multi-site architecture.\nExperience with logical replication–based zero-downtime migrations.\nContributions to Postgres or its ecosystem tooling.\nFamiliarity with our internal tooling, including [gascan].\n\nCompany Perks + Benefits:\n\nPerformance Bonuses\nStock Purchase Options\nMedical/Vision/Dental Benefits\n401k Plan\n20 Paid Vacation Days (plus an additional paid vacation day the month of your birthday!)\n10 Paid Sick Days\nGym Membership Reimbursement\nCommuter Benefits\nPet Insurance\nWellness & Mental Health Programs\nCharitable Donation Matching\nTwo Paid Volunteer Days Off\nDaily catered lunch when in the office\nFull kitchen with snacks and beverages\nIn-building gym\nShuttle to/from Metra\n\nBase Salary Range: $150,000-$180,000 The actual salary offered will be based on the candidate's level of experience and qualifications.\n\nDiscretionary Performance Bonus: 8-12% of base salary based on individual and company performance.\n\nAbout IGNA + tasty\nIG North America is home to tastytrade, tastylive & tastyfx—a family of brands built to democratize trading and empower individual investors. Founded in Chicago by the creators of thinkorswim, acquired by London-based IG Group in 2021, we combine startup innovation with the backing of a FTSE 100 fintech operating across five continents serving over 1.3m customers and handling billions of dollars in transactions – built on scale, trust, and proof.\n\nFrom our headquarters in Chicago's Fulton Market, our team builds award-winning trading platforms, produces live financial education content daily, and creates technology that makes complex markets accessible. tastytrade is our retail brokerage for self-directed investing and trading, with tastylive providing content to educate our customers. tastyfx is the fastest-growing forex broker in the US. tastycrypto provides self-custody digital wallets for decentralized finance.\n\nWe're a lean, collaborative team that values autonomy, pragmatism, and impact. Whether you're building technology, creating content, serving customers, or supporting operations, you'll work alongside people who are passionate about disrupting traditional finance and genuinely care about helping traders succeed. Our culture rewards initiative, embraces experimentation, and measures success by the value we create for our users. The bar is high – bring a curious and forward-thinking mindset and we'll give you the platform to define what comes next. Join us at IG|tasty – the future gets built here.\n\nLocation: Our office is in the West Loop - Chicago's growing center of tech, great cuisine, and high-end bars.\n\ntastytrade | tastylive | tastyfx\n1330 W Fulton Market, Chicago, IL 60607\n\n*Don't meet every single requirement? Studies have shown that women and people of color are less likely to apply to jobs unless they have every single qualification. Our team is dedicated to building a diverse, inclusive, and authentic workplace, so if you're excited about this role, but your experience doesn't align perfectly, we encourage you to apply anyway. You may be just the right candidate for this or other roles!","datePosted":"2026-08-31T09:10:32.157Z","dateModified":"2026-08-31T09:10:32.157Z","hiringOrganization":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Tastytrade","sameAs":"https://jobsearcher.com"},"jobLocation":{"@type":"Place","address":{"@type":"PostalAddress","addressLocality":"Chicago","addressRegion":"IL","addressCountry":"US"}},"identifier":{"@type":"PropertyValue","name":"JobSearcher","value":"90beaee224573ec6bca492ce"},"url":"https://jobsearcher.com/jobs/90beaee224573ec6bca492ce"}}