Senior Data Platform Engineer

Sola Payments is hiring a Senior Data Platform Engineer to own and operate the production data platform, including databases, analytics layers, ingestion pipelines, and infrastructure. The role focuses on architecture, performance, reliability, security, and scalability in a regulated payments environment.

Responsibilities:

• Own the performance, availability, and cost of the Amazon Redshift data warehouse, including cluster sizing, workload management (WLM), distribution and sort key design, and routine vacuum and analyze maintenance
• Administer and tune Cube.js as the semantic and analytics layer built on Redshift
• Administer production relational databases, including MySQL/Aurora MySQL and Microsoft SQL Server, covering backup and recovery, patching, version upgrades, CDC and replication, and high availability and failover configuration
• Lead schema design, administration, and standards for PostgreSQL, which supports newer services such as the Developer Portal and Hierarchy Service
• Profile and tune queries, indexes, and execution plans across relational and NoSQL systems
• Implement monitoring and alerting that identifies performance regressions before they become incidents
• Partner with engineering teams early in the project lifecycle to design schemas, select the appropriate data store for each workload, and establish standards for scalability, normalization, and data integrity
• Own the warehouse ingestion pipelines, including AWS DMS and CDC replication, Glue jobs, Step Functions orchestration, and EventBridge scheduled loads, and resolve throughput, memory, and data freshness issues end to end
• Design DynamoDB table structures, partition and sort key strategies, secondary indexes, and capacity modes to balance performance and cost at scale
• Administer and tune ElastiCache (Redis and Memcached), including cluster topology, eviction policies, and failover behavior
• Develop and maintain runbooks, backup and disaster recovery procedures, and monitoring for all owned database platforms
• Participate in the on call rotation as required
• Manage day to day database operations independently while collaborating with Engineering and Security on architecture reviews, capacity planning, and incident response

Requirements:

• 7+ years of hands-on database administration experience across relational and NoSQL technologies
• At least 2 years of production Amazon Redshift experience (required), including workload management, distribution and sort key design, vacuum and analyze operations, and diagnosing complex performance issues
• Strong MySQL and Microsoft SQL Server administration skills, including backup and restore, replication and CDC, upgrades, and troubleshooting
• Working knowledge of PostgreSQL, with the ability to lead schema design and administration for new services
• Experience in PCI DSS or SOC 2 regulated environments
• Demonstrated success diagnosing and resolving query performance issues in high throughput environments
• Experience designing database architecture for new applications, in addition to maintaining existing systems
• Working knowledge of DynamoDB data modeling and performance tuning
• Experience administering ElastiCache (Redis or Memcached) or equivalent caching infrastructure
• Solid AWS proficiency across the console and CLI, including IAM, CloudWatch, VPC, RDS, and S3
• Scripting proficiency in Python, Bash, or similar, and enough familiarity with application code to collaborate effectively with engineers
• Experience using AI assisted tools to accelerate query development, troubleshooting, documentation, and scripting
• Ability to work independently, prioritize competing demands, and deliver projects with minimal oversight
• Strong written and verbal communication skills, including documenting architecture decisions and operational procedures
• Experience with Cube.js or a comparable semantic layer
• Infrastructure as code experience, preferably Terraform (CloudFormation or CDK also relevant), including extending existing modules
• Experience with data pipeline and ETL tooling such as AWS DMS, Glue, or Step Functions
• Familiarity with CI/CD pipelines and database change management tools such as Flyway or Liquibase
• Relevant AWS certifications, such as AWS Certified Database Specialty or Solutions Architect