Why This Job is Featured on The SaaS Jobs
Modern SaaS platforms increasingly depend on resilient data layers, not just reliable application code, and this Database Reliability Engineer IV role sits directly in that critical path. With an emphasis on back end storage and data streaming, it reflects how SaaS products are evolving toward event driven architectures where databases, queues, and pipelines are part of the customer experience. The presence of AWS, Kubernetes, and Kafka signals a cloud native environment where reliability work is tightly coupled to platform engineering.
For a SaaS career, this kind of position builds durable leverage because it blends operational ownership with software craft. Establishing standards, building internal tooling, and improving observability are patterns that translate across SaaS companies as systems scale and teams multiply. The remit also encourages cross functional influence, partnering with engineering stakeholders and sharing expertise, which is often how senior reliability engineers expand scope beyond a single service.
This role tends to suit engineers who like turning complex infrastructure into repeatable practices and who prefer measurable improvements over one off fixes. It will fit someone comfortable with on call accountability and motivated by automation, performance work, and making database systems easier for other engineers to use.
The section above is editorial commentary from The SaaS Jobs, provided to help SaaS professionals understand the role in a broader industry context.
Job Description
PagerDuty is seeking a proficient Senior Database Reliability Engineer (DBRE) IV to enhance our dynamic, customer-centric team! In this role as a DBRE, you will develop standards and practices for our back-end data storage, and data streaming systems. You will also build tools to enable engineers to easily interact with and optimize their database systems. This role offers a thrilling opportunity to contribute to scaling the PagerDuty Platform. The perfect candidate will come with coding/scripting abilities, Kafka expertise, experience with AWS, and a solid background in Site Reliability Engineering or DBRE in high-scale environments. If you have a track record of solving complex problems with automation and a keen interest in making database systems more approachable to others, then you’re the ideal candidate.
Key Responsibilities
- You partner with Engineering stakeholders to design and deliver reliable, scalable, secure, and performant data platforms.
- You continuously strive to improve the customer experience: Full lifecycle support (creation, development, deployment, retirement), observability, flexible connectivity, and monitoring.
- You stay current on technology trends in order to deliver innovative tools and approaches to interesting problems.
- You share your expertise with the entire Engineering organization
- You participate in a 24/7 on-call rotation. And yes, we use PagerDuty to manage our on-call schedules.
Basic Qualifications
- 5+ years of experience in SRE, DBRE, or Software Development.
- 3+ years experience with database management systems such as MySQL, PostgreSQL, DynamoDB, Cassandra, etc.
- Experience in one or more of the following languages like Ruby, Python, or Golang.
- Experience working on cloud-native infrastructure in AWS.
- Experience working with a container scheduler platform, preferably Kubernetes.
Preferred Qualifications
- Experience with infrastructure as code (Terraform) for managing database & cloud resources.
- Experience with data streaming solutions such as Kafka, AWS Kinesis, etc.
- Knowledge of various Kafka-related tools and frameworks, such as Apache ZooKeeper, Kafka Connect, Kafka Streams, or KSQL, can help with integrating Kafka-based solutions with external systems, data sources, and data destinations.
- Experience with monitoring, observability and logging platforms for databases (e.g. DataDog, New Relic, Grafana Logs, etc.).
- Knowledge of configuration management systems like Ansible, Chef, or Puppet for database infrastructure management.
- Experience in automating database releases, continuous integration/delivery systems, and relevant tools (e.g., Jenkins, CircleCI, Travis CI, Buildkite, etc.) with a focus on database performance and reliability.
PagerDuty is a flexible, hybrid workplace. We embrace and encourage in-person working as an integral part of our culture. Both our employees and external research tells us that co-located collaboration strengthens connections, drives innovation, and accelerates learning.
This role is expected to come into our Atlanta office 2 days per week, so you can thrive in your new role and fully embrace being a Dutonian!
The base salary range for this position is 150,000 - 252,000 USD. This role may also be eligible for bonus, commission, equity, and/or benefits.
Our base salary ranges are determined by role, level, and location. The range, which is subject to change based on primary work location, reflects the minimum and maximum base salary we expect to pay newly hired employees for the position. Within the range, we determine pay for an individual based on a number of factors including market location, job-related knowledge, skills/competencies and experience.
Your recruiter can share more about the specific offerings for this role, as well as the salary range for your primary work location during the hiring process.
