Database Engineer

Summary

Join Us at PlanSource: Your Exciting Career Awaits!

At PlanSource, a leading cloud-based provider of benefits administration technology and services, we are on a mission to simplify how people choose, use, and manage benefits through cutting-edge, AI-powered experiences. This is an incredible time to launch your career with us!

The Database Engineer is responsible for supporting the reliability, performance, scalability, security, and operational governance of PlanSource's database platforms. This role contributes to lifecycle management for production and non-production database environments, including performance optimization, capacity planning, disaster recovery readiness, cloud modernization, automation, observability, and data lifecycle management.

This role blends traditional database administration fundamentals with modern engineering practices, including automation, cloud-native operations, reliability engineering, observability, and cross-functional partnership with application teams.

The Database Engineer partners with Engineering, DevOps, Infrastructure, Security, Architecture, and business stakeholders to help ensure database platforms remain reliable, resilient, secure, governed, cost-aware, and aligned with business objectives.

Key Responsibilities

Database Reliability & Operations

• Develop and maintain database dashboards, alerts, performance baselines, and operational metrics to improve visibility, reduce alert noise, and support proactive issue detection.
• Support operational health, reliability, and availability of MySQL, Aurora, and RDS environments.
• Monitor, analyze, and optimize database performance across production and non-production environments.
• Troubleshoot database issues across application, database, infrastructure, storage, and network layers with appropriate escalation when needed.
• Contribute to root cause analysis efforts and implement corrective and preventative actions to reduce recurring incidents.
• Participate in 24x7 production support, maintenance windows, and database-related on-call rotations.

Performance Engineering

• Review database-impacting application changes, including schema migrations, indexing changes, query patterns, release risks, and application data access patterns.
• Perform SQL tuning, query optimization, indexing analysis, and workload performance reviews.
• Analyze workload patterns and recommend opportunities to improve scalability, throughput, and customer experience.
• Assist with replication performance, database configuration, storage utilization, and resource consumption optimization.
• Partner with Engineering teams on schema design, query design, application database access patterns, and performance-impacting changes.

Capacity Planning & Scalability

• Contribute to database capacity forecasts based on growth trends, enrollment patterns, utilization, and business demand.
• Identify scaling risks and recommend proactive remediation strategies before capacity or performance constraints impact customers.
• Support sharded database environments, workload balancing, tenant placement analysis, and database growth initiatives.
• Provide capacity, performance, and risk information to Technology leadership and senior technical stakeholders as needed.

Disaster Recovery & Business Continuity

• Maintain and execute database recovery procedures.
• Perform backup validation, snapshot review, and restoration testing.
• Participate in failover planning, disaster recovery exercises, and recovery readiness reviews.
• Partner with Infrastructure and Reliability teams to support established RTO and RPO objectives.

Cloud Database Engineering

• Administer AWS RDS and Aurora MySQL database platforms under established standards and patterns.
• Support database modernization, migration, and cloud optimization initiatives.
• Apply cloud database best practices for security, resilience, performance, and cost awareness.
• Assist with multi-region recovery strategies, encryption, backup architecture, and cloud-native operational patterns.

Data Lifecycle Management

• Partner with Engineering, Compliance, Security, and business teams to support retention, archival, purge, and recovery strategies.
• Support archive database environments, storage optimization efforts, and database lifecycle management activities.
• Maintain and execute purge, rollback, reinstate, and recovery procedures for lifecycle management activities.
• Help ensure database practices align with applicable data governance, retention, and compliance expectations.

Automation & Platform Engineering

• Automate database administration, maintenance, monitoring, provisioning, and recovery processes where practical.
• Contribute to Infrastructure-as-Code and operational tooling supporting database environments.
• Improve deployment, alerting, reporting, and operational workflows to reduce manual toil and improve consistency.
• Support repeatable, documented, and governed database platform capabilities.

Governance & Standards

• Follow and contribute to database architecture standards, operational runbooks, and technical documentation.
• Participate in architecture review, change management, incident review, and problem management processes as needed.
• Contribute to standards for upgrades, migrations, onboarding, backup, security, and operational readiness.
• Promote cross-functional collaboration and clear communication across Engineering, DevOps, Infrastructure, Security, and Technology leadership.

Success Indicators

• Supports database service availability, reliability, and performance objectives.
• Contributes to successful Open Enrollment and peak-volume readiness through proactive planning and performance validation.
• Helps reduce recurring database-related incidents through root cause analysis and preventative action.
• Improves database performance, scalability, and operational efficiency through tuning and engineering improvements.
• Completes assigned disaster recovery validation, backup testing, and recovery readiness activities.
• Contributes to capacity planning and database growth forecasts.
• Increases automation and reduces manual operational effort within assigned areas.
• Maintains current, complete, and usable operational documentation and standards.

About You

Core Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, Engineering, or equivalent practical experience.
• Experience administering production MySQL-compatible database environments supporting customer-facing or business-critical applications.
• Hands-on AWS database experience, including Amazon RDS and/or Aurora MySQL.
• Strong SQL tuning, query optimization, indexing, and performance troubleshooting skills.
• Experience with backup, restore, replication, and high availability database practices.
• Experience supporting production systems in high-availability, high-volume, or business-critical environments.
• Experience with database monitoring, observability, and performance analysis using tools such as CloudWatch, Grafana, Prometheus, MySQL Performance Schema, slow query logs, or similar
• Linux administration, shell scripting, or operational automation experience.
• Experience operating in Agile, DevOps, and change-controlled production environments.
• Ability to communicate clearly with technical and non-technical stakeholders and manage multiple priorities.
• Willingness to participate in production support, maintenance windows, and database-related on-call rotations.

Preferred Qualifications

• 5+ years administering production MySQL environments supporting customer-facing applications.
• Experience with sharded MySQL environments, multi-tenant SaaS platforms, or large-scale distributed database architectures.
• Exposure to Database Reliability Engineering or Site Reliability Engineering practices applied to database platforms.
• Experience with Infrastructure-as-Code, including Terraform.
• Experience supporting Microsoft SQL Server environments or working across multiple relational database platforms such as MySQL, SQL Server, PostgreSQL, or Aurora.
• Experience with data retention, archive, purge, rollback, reinstate, and lifecycle management activities.
• Experience with database modernization, migration, major version upgrades, or cloud migration initiatives.
• Familiarity with incident management, problem management, change management, and architecture governance frameworks.
• Exposure to database cost optimization, AWS cost management, or cloud FinOps practices.
• Experience partnering with application engineering teams on schema design, query design, release readiness, and performance-impacting changes.

Technical & Professional Skills

• Strong understanding of production database operations, including availability, performance, security, backup and recovery, replication, maintenance, and operational governance.
• Experience with database automation and operational tooling to improve consistency, reduce manual effort, and support repeatable maintenance and recovery processes.
• Experience with Infrastructure-as-Code, preferably Terraform, for database-related infrastructure, configuration, provisioning, and environment management.
• Experience with database monitoring and performance analysis using tools such as CloudWatch, Grafana, Prometheus, MySQL Performance Schema, slow query logs, or similar platforms.
• Familiarity with incident management, problem management, change management, and architecture governance practices in production environments.
• Familiarity with cloud database cost optimization, including instance sizing, storage growth, backup retention, replica usage, workload patterns, and cost-aware architecture decisions.
• Experience working across multiple relational database platforms such as MySQL, Aurora MySQL, Microsoft SQL Server, or PostgreSQL is preferred.

What We Offer

At PlanSource, benefits are at the core of what we do, and we understand their impact on our employees and their families. That’s why we’ve designed our benefits program to support overall wellbeing across health, financial security, career growth, and work‑life balance.

• Comprehensive health coverage with multiple medical plan options - all covering 100% of in-network preventive care.
• Employer‑funded Health Savings Account (HSA) - up to $1,000 annually for family coverage. 
• Dental & Vision plans with 100% coverage for routine dental care and $250 vision frame allowance, plus employee-only vision premiums at $0.
• 401(k) with immediate vesting and a 50% company match up to 6% of contributions.
• Generous paid parental leave, adoption assistance, and fertility benefits.
• Flexible PTO, paid holidays, a strong culture of work‑life balance and Flex Fridays in the summer.
• Mental health & wellbeing support, including Employee Assistance Program (EAP), movement and wellness resources.
• Rewards and recognition programs that celebrate employees through peer recognition, awards, and quarterly recognition initiatives.

Top 5 Reasons to join PlanSource

#5: Be part of what’s next in benefits technology

Join a company redefining how benefits work. Backed by Vista Equity Partners, PlanSource is continuously investing in innovation, bringing together AI, automation, and human insight to simplify complex processes and deliver real outcomes. This is your opportunity to build the future of benefits at scale.

#4: Make an impact with technology our customers trust

Our platform powers some of the most complex benefits programs in the market, and our customers rely on us to get it right. From a unified benefits ecosystem to AI-driven decision support, everything we build is designed to deliver clarity, confidence, and measurable impact for the people who use it every day.

#3: Be recognized, supported, and set up to thrive

We believe great work deserves recognition and real support. From meaningful rewards and recognition programs to a comprehensive approach to employee support, we invest in helping our people perform at their best and feel valued along the way.

Recognized as a top workplace, PlanSource has earned multiple Great Place to Work certifications and numerous awards, including Best Company for Culture, Work-Life Balance, and Compensation, reinforcing our commitment to an exceptional employee experience.

#2: Grow your career with intention

At PlanSource, career growth doesn’t happen by accident. With a strong track record of internal mobility, structured development paths, and opportunities to take on new challenges, you’ll have the support and flexibility to build a career that evolves with you.

#1: Be part of a culture built on connection and impact

Our culture is rooted in connection, inclusion, and shared success. Guided by our S.O.U.R.C.E. values, we lead with service by putting others first, approach challenges with optimism, and act with urgency to drive meaningful outcomes. We hold ourselves accountable through reliability, continuously grow through curiosity, and operate with efficiency to maximize the impact of our work. Here, diverse perspectives are valued and they directly shape how we collaborate, innovate, and deliver an exceptional experience for our customers.

NOTE: We will consider a remote employee for approved cities PlanSource can accommodate.

If you’re selected, you’ll receive your offer and be asked to complete a background check. This will include a drug screen, criminal record search and verification of previous employment and/or education.

Recruiting Scams: Unfortunately, scams targeting job seekers are common. To protect our candidates, we want to remind you that authorized representatives of PlanSource will only contact you from an email address ending in @plansource.com. PlanSource will never ask for personally identifiable information such as Date of Birth (DOB), Social Security Number (SSN), banking/direct/tax details, etc. via email or any other non-secure system, nor will we instruct you to make any purchases related to your employment. If you believe you’ve encountered a recruiting scam, report it to the Federal Trade Commission and your state’s Attorney General.

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