Job description
We are seeking a Database Engineering Architect to lead the transformation of our legacy database operations into a cloud-first, secure, cost-optimized, and highly available database platform.
This leader will be responsible for building and scaling a high-performance database engineering team supporting Microsoft SQL Server, MySQL, and MongoDB in AWS. You will collaborate daily with our Cloud Infrastructure team, Software Engineering teams, and Enterprise Architects to architect, build, optimize, and operate world-class database solutions. This is a critical, hands-on leadership position that requires technical expertise, team-building skills, strategic thinking, and operational excellence.
Accurate Background is a fast-growing organization, focused on providing employment background screenings and building trustful relationships with our clients. Accurate Background continues to exceed expectations by offering an array of innovative and cutting-edge background check and credentialing products to meet the needs of human resource, loss prevention, and security/legal professionals in employment screening and vendor certification.
We offer a fun, fast-paced environment, with lots of room for growth. If this sounds good to you, join our team!
Responsibilities
- Build and lead a high-performing, cloud-native database engineering team (hire, mentor, and develop top talent).
- Define and drive the technical roadmap for MSSQL, MySQL, and MongoDB database services in AWS.
- Ensure security, availability, scalability, resilience, and cost-efficiency of database platforms.
- Partner with Cloud Infrastructure, Software Engineering, and Enterprise Architecture teams to ensure seamless database integration into cloud architectures and applications.
- Oversee automation of database provisioning, maintenance, backups, high availability (HA), disaster recovery (DR), and scaling operations (IaC, CI/CD pipelines, etc.).
- Define and enforce best practices for database security, monitoring, performance tuning, and compliance (e.g., encryption, access control, logging).
- Provide hands-on support in solving complex database challenges and performance issues.
- Lead capacity planning, budget forecasting, and vendor/license management for database platforms.
- Foster a culture of continuous improvement and cloud-native thinking across the database organization.
- Establish clear KPIs, SLAs, and operational excellence metrics for database services.
- Plan and drive the decommissioning or migration of legacy database systems.
Qualifications
- 10+ years of progressive experience in database engineering or database administration with 3+ years leading and managing database engineering teams.
- Hands-on experience running MSSQL, MySQL, and MongoDB workloads in AWS at scale.
- Expertise in cloud-native database architectures, including managed services like RDS, Aurora, DynamoDB, and/or self-managed clusters on EC2/Kubernetes.
- Strong understanding of cloud infrastructure principles (VPC, IAM, security groups, encryption, multi-AZ deployments).
- Proven success transforming legacy database operations into cloud-optimized, automated environments.
- Deep knowledge of high availability (HA), disaster recovery (DR) strategies, cost optimization, and backup/restore methodologies for databases.
- Practical experience with Infrastructure as Code (IaC) tools (e.g., Terraform, CloudFormation).
- Excellent leadership skills: recruiting, coaching, developing talent, and creating high-trust teams.
- Strong communication and collaboration skills — able to work cross-functionally and align technical solutions to business goals.
- Ability to work with team members from around the globe/experience working with offshore models
Preferred Qualifications
- AWS certifications (especially AWS Certified Database - Specialty or AWS Solutions Architect).
- Experience with Kubernetes Operators for databases (e.g., MongoDB Atlas Operator, SQL Server HA with Kubernetes).
- Familiarity with serverless database patterns (e.g., Amazon Aurora Serverless v2, DynamoDB hybrid architectures).
- Experience with security frameworks (e.g., NIST, CIS Benchmarks) and compliance (e.g., SOC2, HIPAA).
- Familiarity with FinOps concepts to optimize cloud database costs.
- Experience migrating large-scale database workloads to AWS.
- Experience working with CI/CD pipelines for database schema changes (e.g., Flyway, Liquibase).
- Knowledge of observability tooling for databases (e.g., Datadog, New Relic, AWS CloudWatch, Prometheus).
$120,000 - $180,000 a year
The annual base salary for this position ranges from $120,000 - $180,000. Pay will vary depending on job-related knowledge, skills, experience, and relevant education and training. This position may also be eligible for an annual performance-based bonus, commission, or other variable pay plan. The Company also offers a full range of benefits, including medical, dental, and 401k. Your recruiter can share more details about the specific compensation package during the hiring process