Senior Database Design Engineer

Job Description

Company: QuidelOrtho
Location: Rochester, NY
Workplace Type: Hybrid
Employment Type: Full-time
Pay / Compensation: $100,000 to $120,000

About the Role

QuidelOrtho unites the strengths of Quidel Corporation and Ortho Clinical Diagnostics, creating a world-leading in vitro diagnostics company with award-winning expertise in immunoassay and molecular testing, clinical chemistry, and transfusion medicine.

Join us as our next Senior Database Design Engineer within our R&D Instrument Platforms organization. In this role, you will serve as the subject matter expert for relational database design and tuning for Linux-based medical devices with on-device databases. You will own the database schema design, query strategy, and cross-component data access patterns to ensure long-term maintainability, performance, and regulatory compliance. This is a unique opportunity to shape the data backbone of safety-critical systems that operate reliably for years in the field.

Note: This position is hybrid and available to work out of Rochester, NY, Raritan, NJ, or San Diego, CA. Candidates must be able to work onsite at one of these locations and must be available for an onsite interview.

What You’ll Do / Key Responsibilities

• Database Architecture Ownership: Serve as the central design authority for PostgreSQL or equivalent database instances embedded within medical devices running Linux on workstation-class hardware.
• Schema & Interface Design: Design relational schemas, views, indexes, and constraints that balance performance, maintainability, and regulatory traceability.
• Lifecycle Governance: Own and maintain the database design over time, including governance of schema changes, technical debt management, documentation, and design evolution across releases.
• Integration & Interaction: Plan database interfaces and usage patterns that minimize the need for future migrations, while enabling safe, versioned evolution when required.
• Performance Tuning: Lead query optimization, execution plan analysis, indexing strategy, and long-term capacity planning.
• Standardization: Define standards for database versioning, migration strategy, and backward compatibility for regulated, fielded systems.
• Team Collaboration: Collaborate with system architects, middleware developers, and UI teams to ensure database access patterns are stable and well-defined.
• System Operations: Support backup, restore, and recovery strategies appropriate for on-device databases in production medical equipment.
• Regulatory Compliance: Participate in requirements, architecture, design, verification, and validation activities within a regulated quality management system (FDA, IEC 62304, ISO 13485).

Requirements & Qualifications

• Education: B.S. or M.S. degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or a related discipline.
• Experience: Minimum of 5 years of experience with a bachelor’s degree, or 3 years with a master’s degree, preferably leading in a medical device environment or equivalent combination of education and experience.
• Technical Expertise: Demonstrated experience designing and evolving relational schemas, optimizing queries via execution plan analysis, and defining indexing, view, and data-access layers.
• Deployment Experience: Experience supporting on-device or embedded databases running locally on deployed hardware rather than as a managed cloud service.
• Data Migration Mastery: Strong understanding of data evolution strategies, including migrations, versioned schemas, and backward compatibility.
• Industry Context: Experience working in regulated or safety-critical environments (medical devices strongly preferred).
• Programming Skills: Working knowledge of C++ or a similar programming language sufficient to collaborate with application developers and review database interaction code.
• Analytical Thinking: Strong analytical skills with the ability to reason about system-wide performance and data integrity tradeoffs.
• Travel: Ability to travel 5% or less, domestically.

Preferred / Bonus Qualifications (if applicable)

• Experience tuning databases for non-cloud, appliance-style deployments.
• Familiarity with Linux-based embedded or semi-embedded systems (Yocto, Ubuntu, or similar).
• Experience designing database schemas that support concurrent access by multiple services or processes.
• Knowledge of database migration tools and strategies suitable for deployed products with limited upgrade windows.
• Prior experience executing database migrations (including planning, risk mitigation, validation, and rollback).
• Familiarity with scripting or automation (SQL, Python, Bash) for diagnostics, profiling, and maintenance tooling.
• Understanding of observability concerns related to databases (logging, metrics, tracing).

Benefits & Perks

• Comprehensive health package including medical, dental, and vision insurance
• Life and disability insurance
• 401(k) plan
• Employee Assistance Program (EAP)
• Employee Stock Purchase Plan (ESPP)
• Paid Time Off (including sick time) and paid Holidays
• Bonus eligibility

Equal Opportunity

QuidelOrtho believes in Equal Opportunity for all and is committed to ensuring all individuals, including individuals with disabilities, have an opportunity to apply for those positions that they are interested in and qualify for without regard to race, religion, color, national origin, citizenship, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, age, veteran status, disability, genetic information, or any other protected characteristic. QuidelOrtho is also committed to providing reasonable accommodations to qualified individuals so that an individual can perform the duties. If you are interested in applying for an employment opportunity and require special assistance or an accommodation to apply due to a disability, please contact us at recruiting@quidelortho.com.