Lead Database Reliability Engineer
Job Summary
The Lead Database Reliability Engineer will focus on designing and automating reliable, high-performance cloud-based database infrastructures. This role involves utilizing AI/ML technologies to optimize database operations and ensure data integrity for mission-critical applications. The position requires a hands-on technical leader to mentor engineers and drive cross-functional collaboration on resilient data platforms.
Responsibilities
- Lead database architecture and high-performance design
- Implement AI/ML for database operations and automation
- Manage monitoring, backup, and disaster recovery systems
- Provide technical leadership and mentor junior engineers
- Ensure database security and compliance audits
Required Skills
- 8+ years of database administration experience
- Expertise in MySQL and Cloud-native databases (RDS/Aurora)
- Proficiency in Python, Bash, or Ruby scripting
- Experience with AWS environments and observability tools
- High-availability and disaster recovery expertise
Job Details
The Impact of a Lead Database Reliability Engineer at Coupa:
As a Senior Database Reliability Engineer, you will focus primarily on Cloud based SQL Server environments. You will be responsible for designing, automating, and maintaining reliable database infrastructure that supports mission-critical applications. As a senior member of the team, you'll be a hands-on technical leader-driving automation, mentoring engineers, and partnering with development and infrastructure teams to deliver resilient, secure, and performant data platforms.
What You'll Do:
- Lead database architecture and design initiatives, delivering scalable, high-performance, reliable solutions aligned with business needs and long-term strategic goals.
- Leverage AI/ML technologies to improve database operations through performance optimization, capacity planning, anomaly detection, predictive maintenance, and automation.
- Develop, maintain, and enhance database monitoring, alerting, backup, and disaster recovery systems to ensure system health, data integrity, and high availability.
- Troubleshoot and resolve complex database issues, providing technical leadership, guidance, and operational support, including participation in on-call rotations.
- Ensure compliance with regulatory requirements and internal policies by conducting regular database audits, assessments, and governance reviews.
- Collaborate effectively across cross-functional teams, mentor junior database engineers, stay current on emerging database technologies and best practices, and remain flexible to support global teams across multiple time zones.
What You Will Bring to Coupa:
- Bachelor's or Master's degree in Engineering, Science, or a related field (or equivalent practical experience) with 8+ years of hands-on database administration, management, and performance optimization experience.
- Deep expertise in MySQL, including database design, implementation, configuration, security, troubleshooting, maintenance, backup/recovery, replication, and performance tuning.
- Strong automation and cloud experience, including scripting with Bash, Python, or Ruby and managing large-scale AWS environments, with knowledge of cloud-native database services such as RDS and Aurora; Azure or GCP experience is a plus.
- Experience building and maintaining database observability solutions, including monitoring, dashboards, and alerting using tools such as PMM, New Relic, VividCortex, or similar database management platforms.
- Expertise in high-availability and disaster recovery solutions, including failover clustering, Orchestrator, and strategies that ensure database reliability, resilience, and business continuity.
- Preferred qualifications include experience with PostgreSQL or MongoDB, configuration management tools (Chef/Puppet), Terraform, GitHub-based workflows, and relevant database administration or automation certifications.