Database Reliability Engineer

About the Job: 

LaunchDarkly is seeking an experienced Database Reliability Engineer specializing in CockroachDB to join our growing Service Reliability team. This role will be key in hardening, scaling, and optimizing our CockroachDB instances to ensure world-class performance and reliability as we grow. As part of this team, you will enable developers to deliver services on top of robust database infrastructure, ensuring seamless scalability and uninterrupted service to our customers and end-users. LaunchDarkly is a mission-critical service to thousands of brands, and your role as Database Reliability Engineer will help us continue to earn their trust.

Responsibilities:

• Manage and maintain CockroachDB clusters across multiple environments with high availability and cost efficiency.

• Implement and oversee backup, restore, and DR procedures.

• Monitor database performance, adjusting configuration and resources to meet evolving needs.

• Conduct regular performance analysis and tuning of CockroachDB instances to ensure health and efficiency.

• Collaborate with development teams to implement indexing strategies, improve schema design, and optimize application queries.

• Engineer database solutions for scalability, employing best practices in clustering, partitioning, and replication.

• Address and resolve database-related issues, ensuring minimal downtime and impact on users.

• Participate in on-call rotations, providing front-line support and escalation for critical database incidents.

• Work closely with engineering peers, security, and GRC teams to align database strategies with organizational goals.

• Own database-related incidents including root cause analysis, observing trends, and diagnosing complex production issues.

• Contribute to the development and refinement of database standards, guidelines, and procedures.

• Own the full developer experience around the database, including operational stability, SQL tuning, capacity planning, consultation, education, and the client driver and code abstractions.

• Mentor junior team members, fostering a culture of learning and continuous improvement.

Qualifications: 

• Extensive experience with CockroachDB administration, operations, and performance tuning.

• Proficiency in SQL and database schema design, with a strong understanding of distributed database systems.

• Familiarity with cloud services (AWS, GCP, Azure), containerization (Docker, Kubernetes), and infrastructure as code (Terraform).

• Extensive observability expertise with a major platform, ideally Datadog.

• Demonstrated ability to work in a fast-paced, collaborative environment, with excellent problem-solving and communication skills.

Pay:

Target pay ranges based on Geographic Zones* for Level P4:

• Zone 1: San Francisco/Bay Area or New York City Metropolitan Area (if not Bay area specific role): $173,000 - $204,000**

• Zone 2: Boston, DC, Irvine, LA, Monterey, Santa Barbara, Santa Rosa, Seattle: $156,000 - $184,000**

• Zone 3: All other US locations: $147,000 - $173,000**

LaunchDarkly operates from a place of high trust and transparency; we are happy to state the pay range for our open roles to best align with your needs. Exact compensation may vary based on skills, experience, and location.

*Within the United States, our geographic pay zones are defined by counties surrounding major metropolitan areas.
**Restricted Stock Units (RSUs), health, vision, and dental insurance, and mental health benefits in addition to salary.

About LaunchDarkly:

Modern software delivery was supposed to be the foundation for a thriving digital business but reality has proven otherwise. Slow, inefficient development cycles, costly outages, and fragmented customer experiences are preventing developers from building their best software. The LaunchDarkly platform helps developers innovate on new features faster while protecting them with a safety valve to instantly rewind when things go wrong. Developers can target product experiences to any customer segment and maximize the business impact of every feature. And by gradually rolling out new application components, they escape nightmare "big-bang" technology migrations. 

The LaunchDarkly platform was built to guide engineers to the next frontier of DevOps by:

• Improving the velocity and stability of software releases, without the fear of end customer outages
• Delivering targeted experiences by easily personalizing features to customer cohorts
• Maximizing the business impact of every feature through the ability to experiment and optimize
• Coordinating the release and optimization of software to provide consistent experiences across mobile platforms and device types
• Improving the effectiveness and productivity of engineering teams, by providing insights into engineering cadence and stability

At LaunchDarkly, we believe in the power of teams. We're building a team that is humble, open, collaborative, respectful and kind. We are an equal opportunity employer and value diversity at our company. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status. LD invites any applicant to review our written Affirmative Action Plan. To do so, contact People Ops at [email protected]. 

One of our company values is 'Widen the Circle'. Which means we seek out diversity of perspectives to get better results. We understand everyone has their own unique talents and experiences. We encourage you to apply to this role even if you don’t think you meet 100% of the qualifications outlined above. We can find out together if it's the right match for your skillset.

Do you need a disability accommodation?

Fill out this accommodations request form and someone from our People Operations team will contact you for assistance.