Senior Database Engineer - remote

Posted 3 years ago  • Toronto, ON, Canada
Stack Overflow

We are currently seeking a SeniorDatabase Administrator to join our DistributedSite Reliability Engineering team. This role can be performed from one of our Canadian offices, remotely across Canada, or a combination of both.

What your team does:


Clio is looking for a Senior Database Administrator to join the team that builds and manages our MySQL databases and related systems.

We're building a cross-Canada, distributed team that forms the foundation of Clio's engineering organization:

  • We build, secure, and maintain the infrastructure and critical services that power Clio’s core applications.
  • We help Clions make data-driven decisions by providing observability and transparency for all of our environments.
  • We collaborate with the Clio product development teams to build tools that improve workflows and remove manual labour or friction points.

A day in the life might look like:

  • You’ll be responsible for preparing Clio’s database infrastructure for the future in terms of scale and reliability;
  • You will collaboratively define the roadmap to support business goals, and satisfy application requirements;
  • You will investigate and solve performance problems with our MySQL databases
  • You will use your experience to guide development teams on how to improve and optimize their use of the databases;
  • You will scope, define, and collaborate with developers to implement automation and processes that power reliability of Clio’s datastores;
  • You'll raise the bar by spreading database knowledge to your team;
  • Elevate and educate our engineering processes within Clio, contributing to our cultural values of “No doors, only windows”(an emphasis on collaboration and clear communication) and “Live a learning mindset”(an emphasis on constant self-improvement and evolution in the face of change).

You may be a fit for this role if you:

  • You are equally energized by both your own technical work as well as contributing to the career growth of your team;
  • You have strong opinions that are weakly held, and foster that same attitude in others;
  • You challenge and enable your team to take initiative, explore, and implement new improvements while balancing that work against satisfying the requirements as defined by the business;
  • You believe in providing honest, actionable feedback to your team, and encourage your team to reciprocate;
  • You devise roadmaps to guide the future of our datastores infrastructure in terms of scale and data security

What you should have:

  • Hands-on technical expertise with building and configuring MySQL database servers;Bonus points for understanding how to do this in a cloud environment
  • Experience investigating and solving performance problems with MySQL databases
  • Experience using ProxySQL and the percona toolkit
  • Be prepared to work with and develop the MySQL knowledge to rest of the SRE team
  • A portfolio of successful projects (as well as a collection of lessons learned from failed projects).

Don’t have all of those? The most important part of this job is that you approach new challenges with curiosity and a drive to apply what you learn to fixing root causes, not just symptoms. Deep curiosity and a desire to learn will help you succeed in this job, combined with a drive to help others by shipping code.

Serious bonus points if you have:

  • Experience using migrations tools, pt-online-schema-change or gh-ost
  • Experience managing hosts with Puppet.
  • Experience working with Docker and Kubernetes.
  • Experience developing with Ruby or GoLang.
  • Experience managing AWS resources with CloudFormation or Terraform.
  • Experience scripting with BASH.

Where your team works:

Clio is currently transitioning to a workplace that is distributed by design. This means that Clio offers employees more choice: the opportunity to work from one of our hub offices across Canada, remotely, or a combination of both. We have invested in best-in-class tools, technology, and culture to ensure our team members are able to do their best work whether they prefer to work from an office or remotely.