Sr. Engineer, Database Reliability

AI at Zapier At Zapier , we build and use automation every day to make work more efficient, creative, and human. So if you’re using AI tools while applying here - that’s great! We just ask that you use them responsibly and transparently . Check out our guidance on How to Collaborate with AI During Zapier’s Hiring Process , including how to use AI tools like ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, or others during our hiring process - and when not to. Sr. Engineer, Database Reliability Hi there! We're looking for a Database Reliability Engineer (DBRE) to join the State team at Zapier. We need someone who can set direction on our data infrastructure and isn’t afraid to get into the weeds to solve challenging operational problems. The State team owns the platform behind Zapier's stateful services: our relational database fleet (MySQL and PostgreSQL), a caching layer built on Redis and ElastiCache, and the tooling that lets product teams use it all easily, safely, and reliably. You'll shape our practices around automation, observability, performance, reliability, and disaster recovery, and help make the right way the easy way for the teams building on top of our data layer. This is a senior DBRE role on the State team. You'll be the technical center of gravity for database and cache work: the person other engineers come to for design review, the one setting the bar for how we operate the data layer, and the one responsible for growing the DBRE practice on the team over time. We know applying for and taking on a new job at any company requires a leap of faith. We want you to feel comfortable and excited to apply at Zapier. To help share a bit more about life at Zapier, here are a few resources in addition to the job description that can give you an inside look at what life is like at Zapier. Hopefully, you'll take the leap of faith and apply. Our Commitment to Applicants Culture and Values at Zapier Zapier Guide to Remote Work Diversity and Inclusivity at Zapier Zapier is proud to be an equal opportunity workplace dedicated to pursuing and hiring a diverse workforce. About You You're an experienced database technologist. You have at least 7 years in systems administration, systems engineering, or software development, with at least 4 years running production relational databases. You have deep expertise in MySQL or PostgreSQL and working knowledge of the other, including each engine's ecosystem of extensions and tools. You understand caching (such as Redis) as part of the data layer, how to design and operate it at scale, and the tradeoffs between caching and the database underneath . You know the cloud and treat infrastructure as code. You've designed and maintained highly available, cloud-based database systems in AWS or another cloud platform, and you manage that infrastructure with Terraform or similar IaC tooling rather than by hand. You're comfortable operating stateful services alongside Kubernetes or other distributed systems, and you understand the tradeoffs of running data workloads in and around orchestrated environments. You build and use observability. You've implemented metrics, logging, and alerting for data systems using tools like Datadog, Prometheus, or CloudWatch, and you know the difference between a dashboard that looks good and one that catches problems before customers do. You treat query performance data, replication lag, and cache hit rates as first-class signals. You partner with product teams. Product teams are your customers. When a team comes to you with a design or a problem, you ask about their workload before prescribing a solution, give them options with tradeoffs rather than edicts, and leave them more capable than you found them. You handle support requests with the same care as incident response, you