Principal Platform Engineer - Database

Job Description

The Platform Engineering team (R&D) builds and operates the foundational infrastructure that powers IFS Cloud. We're organised into platform teams – each led by a technical lead who sets direction and leads a squad of engineers.

The Database team is newly established, reflecting the strategic importance of database platform modernisation. You'll be joining at the ground floor with the mandate to shape how this team operates.

About the Role

We're looking for a Database Team Lead at principal engineer level – someone who can own the strategy, design, and automation of database deployment and orchestration for our R&D department. This isn't a traditional DBA or operations role. We need someone who thinks like an engineer first: automates by default, codes pipelines, and treats database infrastructure as software.

You'll lead a team responsible for how databases are designed, provisioned, deployed, and orchestrated across IFS Cloud. You'll set the technical direction – with a strong bias toward automation, self-service, and modern engineering practices.

The relationship with the operational team is critical. This is an R&D role. You work alongside the operational team that run the infrastructure for our customers. They are the direct consumers of everything you build. The reliability, supportability, and ease-of-operation of the database platform is a direct consequence of the decisions you make. You'll work closely with the ops team to validate your automation and strategy against real-world metrics – if it's hard to support, that's your problem to solve. Their experience is how you measure success.

You provide database as a capability - you'll be comfortable engaging with the product teams that consume your database capabilities. You'll treat them like customers and obsess about their Developer Experience.

This role values quality of experience over quantity. We care about what you've built and how you think, not how many years are on your CV.

Key Responsibilities

Database Strategy & Architecture

• Own the technical strategy for database platforms across IFS Cloud, with a focus on Oracle
• Define and evolve standards for database provisioning, configuration, high availability, and disaster recovery
• Drive the shift from manual database operations to fully automated, code-driven workflows
• Evaluate and recommend tooling, patterns, and architectural improvements
• Collaborate with other platform teams (Cloud Service, Security, Developer Experience) to ensure cohesive platform architecture

Deployment Automation & CI/CD

• Design and maintain CI/CD pipelines for database schema changes, migrations, and releases
• Implement Infrastructure as Code (IaC) for database provisioning and environment management
• Build self-service capabilities that allow development teams to provision and manage database environments safely
• Automate patching, upgrades, backup/restore, and cloning workflows
• Integrate database changes into GitOps workflows with proper version control and audit trails

Database as a Platform Capability

• Present database services as a self-service capability to the many product teams that depend on them – provisioning, configuration, scaling, and lifecycle management should be accessible without filing tickets or waiting on your team
• Understand the needs of internal consumers and design interfaces (APIs, CLI tools, portals, templates) that make database capabilities easy to discover and use correctly
• Define clear service offerings, documentation, and guardrails so product teams can move fast without compromising standards
• Treat product teams as customers – gather feedback, measure adoption, and iterate on the developer experience

Reliability Engineering & Ops Partnership

• Define SLOs/SLIs for database availability, performance, and recovery – implemented by the operational database team
• Design proactive monitoring, alerting, and observability for database health
• Act as third-line escalation for complex database incidents and drive post-incident reviews
• Work closely with the operational team to validate that automation, tooling, and architectural decisions translate into real improvements in supportability and reliability
• Use operational metrics and feedback to continuously refine the platform – deployment success rates, time-to-recover, toil reduction, and support ticket patterns are your scoreboard
• Optimise query performance patterns, resource utilisation, and cost efficiency at the platform level
• Ensure compliance with security policies, access controls, and regulatory requirements (including FedRAMP where applicable)

Team Leadership

• Lead and mentor a team of database engineers
• Set technical direction, define team goals, and manage delivery
• Participate in Architecture Forums and cross-team planning
• Represent the database platform in programme-level discussions and stakeholder engagements
• Foster a culture of automation, continuous improvement, and engineering excellence

Qualifications

Must-Have

• Deep Oracle database expertise – architecture, internals, RAC, performance tuning, backup/recovery, VM and Exadata/Exascale. Oracle is our workhorse and you need to know it inside out
• Strong PostgreSQL and Microsoft SQL Server experience – both self-hosted and cloud-managed. At principal level, we expect breadth across major database engines, not just depth in one
• Strong automation and coding skills. Python, Bash, or similar. You write code to solve operational problems, not just scripts to get by
• CI/CD experience – you've built or significantly contributed to pipelines for database changes. Familiarity with tools like Liquibase, Flyway, or similar database release automation
• Infrastructure as Code – experience with Terraform, Ansible, or equivalent for provisioning database infrastructure
• Platform engineering mindset – you think in terms of self-service, developer experience, and reducing toil. You'd rather build a system than repeat a manual process. You understand how to present technical infrastructure as a capability that product teams can consume independently
• Ownership mentality – comfortable owning a technical domain end to end: strategy, execution, reliability, and people

Nice-to-Have

• Experience with cloud-managed database services on OCI (in addition to Azure/AWS covered above)
• Familiarity with containerised environments and Kubernetes
• Experience with database observability tooling (Datadog, Grafana, OEM)
• Background in SRE or Database Reliability Engineering (DBRE) practices
• Understanding of compliance frameworks (FedRAMP, SOC 2, ISO 27001)

What We Value Over a Long CV

• Evidence of automating something that was previously manual and painful
• A project where you designed a database deployment pipeline from scratch
• Experience leading or mentoring others, even informally
• Clear thinking about trade-offs – reliability vs speed, automation vs complexity
• Curiosity about how the rest of the platform works, not just the database layer

Additional Information

We embrace flexibility and hybrid work opportunities to support diverse needs and lifestyles, while also valuing inclusive workplace experiences. By fostering a sense of community, we drive innovation, strengthen connections, and nurture belonging. Our commitment ensures you can work in a way that suits you best, while also engaging with colleagues to share ideas and build meaningful relationships.