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Join Kraken's senior database infrastructure team as a Senior Database Administrator responsible for scaling and optimizing the distributed MariaDB environments that power critical financial services. You'll work alongside experienced DBAs and SREs to design robust, high-availability database systems supporting global expansion and new product initiatives.
Key responsibilities include scaling and tuning high-throughput MariaDB clusters, strengthening disaster-recovery and backup procedures, and reducing manual operational work through automation and infrastructure-as-code. You'll improve observability and alerting quality, enhance database security through access controls and patching practices, and contribute to modern platform initiatives including containerized environments and reproducible deployments. Partner with service teams to drive performance optimization and operational readiness across the engineering organization, and participate in on-call rotations focused on preventative engineering.
You bring 5+ years of hands-on experience operating MariaDB/MySQL in high-volume production environments, including tuning, replication, and troubleshooting. Strong understanding of high-availability patterns, distributed database behavior, and practical failure scenarios is essential. You have practical experience with database proxies (HAProxy, ProxySQL, MaxScale) and load-balancing layers, plus solid expertise with CI/CD, GitOps, and Infrastructure-as-Code workflows (Terraform preferred). Cloud, Linux, and networking fundamentals are required, along with hands-on container and Kubernetes experience at scale.
You demonstrate strong security instincts around access control and safe operational workflows, with deep observability expertise in monitoring, alerting hygiene, and incident response. Excellent communication and collaboration skills enable you to partner with stakeholders, negotiate long-term plans, and tie success to specific metrics and KPIs.
Nice-to-haves include SRE methodologies (error budgets, operational reviews), strong scripting/programming ability (Python or Rust), GitOps tooling experience (ArgoCD, GitHub Actions), multi-region or disaster-recovery design exposure, and interest in cryptocurrency or decentralized systems.
