Postgres Product Engineer

About the role

You will architect and execute the product strategy for Render's Postgres offering, ensuring it meets the evolving needs of our developer-first cloud platform. In this role, you own the end-to-end lifecycle of Postgres-related features, from initial discovery and requirements gathering through implementation, launch, and ongoing optimization. You will act as the primary liaison between deep technical implementation and high-level product vision, translating complex technical constraints into clear product requirements. You will collaborate closely with design, product, and engineering partners on full-stack initiatives that define the future of developer infrastructure. Your work will directly influence how thousands of developers provision, scale, and manage their databases on Render. You will be responsible for maintaining the reliability and performance of our Postgres fleet while driving innovation in manageability and user experience. This is an opportunity to shape a critical piece of infrastructure that powers modern, AI-driven applications.

Key facts

What you'll do

Investigate and analyze operational data and user feedback to identify root causes of Postgres performance issues and reliability bottlenecks.

Design and prototype new Postgres management workflows and automation scripts that reduce manual toil and improve developer onboarding.

Collaborate with platform and infrastructure engineers to define the architectural roadmap for Postgres compatibility and scaling strategies.

Evaluate and integrate emerging open-source Postgres tools and extensions to enhance Render's service capabilities.

Partner with the product team to define and prioritize the roadmap for Postgres features, balancing technical feasibility with customer value.

Lead incident reviews for Postgres outages, translating findings into actionable improvements for monitoring and failover procedures.

Develop and maintain detailed technical documentation for internal processes and customer-facing Postgres features.

Work with security and compliance teams to ensure Postgres configurations and access controls meet industry standards and best practices.

Implement observability enhancements for Postgres instances, providing deeper insights into query performance and resource utilization.

Champion best practices for database lifecycle management, including backup, restore, and disaster recovery testing.

Coordinate with the on-call rotation to ensure rapid response and resolution of critical Postgres production issues.

Mentor junior engineers on Postgres debugging techniques and contribute to code reviews for database-related services.

Drive experiments to test new Postgres features in a staging environment before rolling them out to production customers.

Foster a culture of continuous improvement by regularly sharing learnings and proposing process changes to increase team efficiency.

Requirements

You must possess a minimum of 6 years of professional software development experience in a production environment.

You must have demonstrated experience working collaboratively with product managers and design teams to deliver complex software projects.

You must show a proven track record of taking ownership of projects and making sound technical and product decisions independently.

You must be comfortable designing, building, and operating distributed systems that handle high concurrency and large data volumes.

You must have extensive, hands-on experience designing, administering, and scaling Postgres databases in demanding production environments.

You must be familiar with modern software build, deployment, and infrastructure-as-code tools used in cloud-native development.

You must have a strong understanding of SQL optimization, database indexing strategies, and execution plan analysis.

You must have experience with monitoring, logging, and alerting practices for database-centric applications.

Nice to have

You have experience working across different parts of the technology stack, including front-end, back-end, and infrastructure.

You possess a solid understanding of web frameworks, RESTful APIs, and database internals beyond just SQL syntax.

You have a background building or contributing to products that serve growth or enterprise customers and understand their unique requirements.

You are familiar with technologies commonly used at Render, such as the Go programming language, TypeScript, React, Kubernetes, Postgres, Terraform, and Temporal.

You have contributed to open-source database projects or have a portfolio that demonstrates deep technical expertise in cloud infrastructure.

You have experience with chaos engineering practices and conducting controlled failure experiments to improve system resilience.

You have knowledge of regulatory compliance frameworks relevant to data storage and privacy, such as GDPR or HIPAA.

Practical notes

This role is generally not eligible for new visa sponsorship. Render may sponsor existing visa transfers at its discretion.

Render offers 4 weeks of paid vacation.

New parents receive 14 weeks of fully paid parental leave.

Benefits include long-term disability, life insurance, and 401K plans.

Render provides 100% employer-paid medical coverage and 99% employer-paid dental and vision coverage for employees and one dependent.

A monthly stipend is provided for wellness, mental health, and hobbies.

Employees receive a monthly subsidy for cell phone and internet expenses.

Home office stipends are available for remote employees.

Support and benefits are available for continuous learning.