Senior PostgreSQL DBA / Platform Engineer

Postgres
UNITED STATES
October 25, 2026
Contractor
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Job Description

Company: TekWissen
Location: Taylor, TX
Workplace Type: Hybrid
Employment Type: Contract

About the Role

TekWissen is seeking a hands-on Senior PostgreSQL Specialist / Platform Engineer for a 12-month contract assignment in Taylor, TX. In this role, you will be responsible for establishing enterprise database architecture, operational standards, HA/DR, backup/recovery, monitoring, performance tuning, security, automation, lifecycle management, and knowledge transfer for a client operating the Texas power grid.

What You’ll Do / Key Responsibilities

  • Assess & Remediate Environments: Evaluate and optimize enterprise PostgreSQL environments across DEV, TEST, PROD, and DR.
  • Reference Architecture: Design and implement PostgreSQL reference architectures and standardized database builds.
  • Engine High Availability: Engineer and test HA using streaming replication, Patroni (or equivalent), DCS quorum, HAProxy, PgBouncer, fencing, and failover/failback mechanisms.
  • Backup & Recovery: Implement pgBackRest, WAL archiving, PITR, retention policies, encryption, and automated restore validation.
  • Disaster Recovery: Design and test DR architectures, promotion/failback procedures, and RPO/RTO controls.
  • Monitoring & Alerting: Implement comprehensive monitoring for PostgreSQL, replication, WAL, autovacuum/XID, queries, locks, storage, and system health using Prometheus, Grafana, and pg_stat_statements.
  • Performance Tuning: Diagnose and tune SQL queries, execution plans, indexes, vacuum/bloat, memory, checkpoints, WAL, I/O, and concurrency.
  • Security & Compliance: Establish security/IAM standards, TLS, pg_hba, role/privilege structures, secrets management, and pgAudit / SIEM integrations.
  • Upgrades & Patching: Lead minor patching and major-version upgrade planning and execution, including EOL remediation.
  • Automation: Automate builds and operations using Git, Ansible, Terraform, Python, shell scripting, and CI/CD pipelines.
  • Documentation & Handoff: Create runbooks, architecture diagrams, standards, and conduct operational knowledge transfer.

Requirements & Qualifications

  • Experience: 8-10+ years in database administration with 5+ years of substantial production PostgreSQL administration in enterprise environments.
  • Education: Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Computer Engineering, or a closely related technical field.
  • PostgreSQL Expertise: Deep hands-on experience with configuration, WAL, MVCC, VACUUM/autovacuum, XID wraparound, query plans, indexing, partitioning, and extensions.
  • High Availability Stack: Experience with Patroni, etcd/Consul, streaming replication, HAProxy, PgBouncer, fencing, and split-brain prevention.
  • Backup Tools: Strong proficiency with pgBackRest, WAL archiving, PITR, and large-database recovery testing.
  • Linux Administration: Strong RHEL/Linux system administration skills including systemd, LVM, networking, SELinux, kernel/sysctl tuning, and shell scripting.
  • Automation & IaC: Production experience with Ansible, Git, Terraform, Python, and Infrastructure as Code (IaC).
  • Operations: Demonstrated 24×7 production troubleshooting, incident response, root cause analysis (RCA), and major version upgrades.

Preferred / Bonus Qualifications

  • Experience managing multi-TB PostgreSQL estates in mission-critical, 24×7 environments.
  • Hands-on experience with VMware, OpenShift, or Kubernetes deployment of PostgreSQL.
  • Experience with Oracle-to-PostgreSQL migrations.
  • Background with EDB, Percona, Crunchy Data, or upstream PostgreSQL distributions.
  • Experience in regulated or critical-infrastructure environments.

Benefits & Perks

  • Contract Duration: 12-Month Assignment with potential for extension.
  • Work Model: Hybrid work setting located in Taylor, TX.

TekWissen® Group is an equal opportunity employer supporting workplace diversity.

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