Database Reliability Engineer

About the role

SpaceX is seeking an experienced Database Reliability Engineer to join the IT Engineering organization. This role involves managing database technologies across the company, focusing on Oracle and PostgreSQL. The ideal candidate will thrive in a dynamic environment, demonstrating strong technical skills and a commitment to continuous learning.

Key facts

What you'll do

• Ensure the health, uptime, and performance of all Oracle and PostgreSQL databases.
• Collaborate with internal teams to understand needs, plan improvements, and communicate updates.
• Develop scripts for automating routine tasks using Python, bash, or similar languages.
• Design, deploy, and maintain database monitoring systems.
• Create and validate backup and restore solutions.
• Engineer and regularly test disaster recovery strategies.
• Identify and optimize inefficient database queries.
• Develop detailed test conditions and cases for queries and reports.
• Troubleshoot data issues and support software development teams.
• Contribute to problem resolution, team decisions, and project planning.
• Create comprehensive documentation and support runbooks.
• Document all actions and configurations applied to database systems.
• Mentor other database staff through training and responsibility sharing.
• Participate in an on-call rotation.
• Serve as a subject matter expert for database design, optimization, and maintenance.
• Automate database administration tasks and provide self-service solutions.

Requirements

• Bachelor's degree in computer science, information systems, or engineering with 8+ years in IT; OR 5+ years of professional experience in database reliability or DevOps without a degree.
• 5+ years of experience optimizing SQL queries and data replication.
• 5+ years of experience developing monitoring tools and tuning databases.

Nice to have

• Expertise in at least two database technologies (e.g., MySQL, PostgreSQL, Oracle).
• Strong attention to detail, accuracy, communication, and interpersonal skills.
• Experience with highly available solutions and clustered environments.
• Ability to contribute to planning, status updates, and root cause analysis.
• Knowledge of configuration management automation.
• Knowledge of data structure design and modeling.
• Understanding of infrastructure to diagnose problem origins.
• Good understanding of the development cycle for effective developer collaboration.
• Experience with Oracle RAC, RMAN, Barman, PGhero, and similar backup/troubleshooting tools.
• Experience with Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems.
• Working knowledge and basic support for MS SQL and Windows Server.
• Experience with GIT and Python.
• Machine learning experience.
• Big Data experience.

Skills & tools

• Oracle
• PostgreSQL
• Python
• Bash
• SQL
• Linux
• Server/storage infrastructure
• Oracle RAC
• RMAN
• Barman
• PGhero
• GIT

Practical notes

This role requires working extended hours and weekends as needed. To comply with U.S. export regulations (ITAR), applicants must be a U.S. citizen, lawful permanent resident, refugee, or asylee. Compensation includes base salary, potential long-term incentives (stock or cash awards), discretionary bonuses, and an Employee Stock Purchase Plan. Benefits include comprehensive medical, vision, and dental coverage, a 401(k) retirement plan, disability and life insurance, paid parental leave, and other perks. Employees accrue 3 weeks of paid vacation and 10+ paid holidays annually, plus sick leave.