Staff Database Reliability Engineer - PostgreSQL

About the role

We're looking for a hands-on Database Engineer to own PostgreSQL as a production system at Stream. You'll work directly with a small, senior team and be responsible for the performance, reliability, and operability of the databases that store and serve data for Stream's entire real-time platform. This is a deep, hands-on engineering role. You'll spend your time in query plans, storage internals, and the operational realities of running databases under heavy, continuous load - not administering them from a distance. Why This Role Exists We have 35-40 different DBs (largest one is 15tb), with large writing throughput. To save hosting costs, we plan on migrating from AWS RDS to self-hosted Postgres on Kubernetes. For that, we need help from someone who:

Responsibilities

• Performance and internals - diagnose and resolve performance issues from the query down to the storage engine: indexing strategy, query planning, vacuum and bloat management, and tuning under sustained write load.
• Reliability and operations - own the operational characteristics of our Postgres fleet, including backup, replication, and high availability as we take on more responsibility for running these systems ourselves.
• Scaling the data layer - work on sharding, partitioning, and the architectural decisions that keep the database performant as data and traffic grow.
• Beyond that, you'll set standards for how we run Postgres, collaborate closely with application engineers to connect database behaviour to real access patterns, and help shape the long-term direction of our data infrastructure.
• Core Technologies
• Go - PostgreSQL - CockroachDB - Redis - Kubernetes - AWS
• Required
• Deep PostgreSQL expertise - you understand the internals (MVCC, vacuum and bloat, the query planner, indexing, replication) well enough to debug hard problems and reason from first principles, not from defaults.
• Production ownership at scale - you've run Postgres behind high-traffic services with large datasets and high write throughput, and you've felt and fixed the failure modes that come with that.
• Self-managed databases - you've operated Postgres yourself (on Kubernetes, bare-metal, or VMs), owning backup, replication, and high availability. Managed services alone aren't enough background for this role.
• Sharding and scaling - you've sharded a real Postgres workload, not only table partitioning.
• An engineering mindset - you can read and write code, and you connect database behaviour to application access patterns rather than treating the DB in isolation.
• Judgement alongside AI tooling - we use AI heavily in our workflows; you should be able to use it well and know when it's wrong. Deep internals knowledge is what lets you tell the difference.
• Strong Plus
• Multi-tenant database experience
• Experience pushing PostgreSQL beyond conventional relational use (large semi-structured or blob data, flexible query interfaces)
• Messaging, social, or other high-write, event-heavy storage backgrounds
• Connection pooling, logical replication / CDC, or Postgres-compatible distributed SQL (CockroachDB, Yugabyte)
• Open source contributions to database or infrastructure tooling
• What We're Not Looking For
• Being explicit saves everyone time:
• Managed-service-only backgrounds - if your Postgres experience is entirely RDS/Aurora/Cloud SQL with no self-managed ownership, the core of this role will be unfamiliar.
• Application developers above the query layer - if you've used Postgres through an ORM but never read a query plan or tuned the database, this isn't the right fit.
• DBAs who don't code - administration alone isn't enough; this is an engineering role.
• Analytics / data-warehouse specialists - this is high-write transactional (OLTP) Postgres, not Redshift/Snowflake/Spark/ETL work.
• AI skepticism - we won't spend time convincing you AI is worth adopting.
• Benefits (Netherlands-based employees):
• Generous compensation
• Company equity
• 28 days PTO + Dutch public holidays
• Pension scheme
• Learning & Development budget
• Commute reimbursement to Amsterdam or company bike
• Fitness stipend
• Access to open-source project work
• Benefits are adjusted per country of residence for remote hires.
• Why Stream?
• High scale/ difficult engineering
• Default alive. Startup growth opportunity with healthy revenue
• Strong engineering culture. Engineering is what makes us succeed
• All managers are hands-on and capable engineers
• Edge network of servers around the world
• Great opportunity to learn and grow
• Raised $58M from leading VCs (Felicis Ventures, Notable Capital

Benefits

Additional Information

Location: Remote OR Hybrid from Amsterdam About Stream Stream powers real-time Chat , Video , Activity Feeds , and AI Moderation for billions of end-users across thousands of apps - from Strava and Bumble to eBay and Patreon. Our platform processes billions of API requests per month and supports applications with millions of concurrent users , while delivering highly reliable, low-latency services and a great developer experience.

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