Principal Database Reliability Engineer (DBRE) / Lead DBA (Hiring Immediately) in London

At Partnerize, we're on a mission to transform the way businesses grow. We've built the leading partnership automation platform that empowers brands to discover, engage, and convert their audiences at scale. From affiliate marketing to influencer collaborations, we help our clients build and manage profitable partnerships that drive real results. We're a team of passionate problem-solvers who are dedicated to helping our clients win in the ever-evolving world of digital marketing.

We're looking for passionate, talented people who want to be part of a winning team. At Partnerize, you'll find a culture of collaboration, innovation, and respect. We're guided by our core values, and we're committed to creating an environment where everyone can do their best work. We also offer a competitive salary, generous benefits, and a flexible work environment that allows you to thrive both personally and professionally. If you're ready to grow your career and make a difference, we'd love to hear from you.

We are at a pivotal point in our tech progression at Partnerize, looking to scale, modernise, and future-proof our platform. At the heart of this evolution is our data layer. We are looking for a Principal Database Reliability Engineer (DBRE) to take extreme ownership of our critical database infrastructure. Working within our Technical Operations team, you will act as the definitive Subject Matter Expert for our highly available MySQL and PostgreSQL estates, operating with a high degree of autonomy to design, build, and optimise our data tier. This is a high-impact role where you will predominantly lead the database strategy, bridging the gap between traditional database administration and modern Site Reliability Engineering (SRE). You will architect resilient data systems, automate toil through Infrastructure as Code, manage our event-streaming platforms (Kafka), and empower our wider engineering teams with database best practices. If you are excited by the challenge of owning a complex data estate and defining its future state, this is the role for you.

As a Principal DBRE at Partnerize, You Will:

• Own the Data Estate: Serve as the primary architect and technical lead for our highly available, distributed MySQL and PostgreSQL environments.
• Automate Everything: Transition manual database management into code. Build, maintain, and optimize deployment pipelines for infrastructure using Terraform, Ansible, and Python.
• Architect for Scale: Lead capacity planning, disaster recovery design, and high-availability architecture for both bare-metal and containerized data systems.
• Manage Event Streaming: Oversee and scale our data streaming and queuing technologies (Kafka, RabbitMQ) to support event-driven microservices.
• Drive Performance: Proactively monitor, troubleshoot, and optimize database performance, advising development teams on query tuning, schema design, and technical debt refactoring.
• Empower the Team: Mentor wider TechOps and Engineering teams on data infrastructure best practices, creating cohesive documentation and building guardrails so the broader team can safely support the data tier.
• Lead Incident Response: Act as the ultimate escalation point for complex database incidents, leading Root Cause Analysis (RCAs) and implementing permanent fixes.
• Participate in On-Call: Share in the rotational on-call duties, with a specific focus on ensuring the database tier remains robust and self-healing to minimize after-hours alerts.

Essential Knowledge, Skills and Experience:

• 8+ years of experience in Senior DBA, DBRE, or deeply data-focused SRE roles managing large-scale, production systems.
• Expert-level relational database knowledge: Deep, hands-on experience designing, scaling, and maintaining HA environments in MySQL and PostgreSQL, including replication, clustering, and backup/restore strategies.
• Infrastructure as Code & Automation: Strong proficiency in Python or Bash scripting, combined with configuration management and IaC tools (Ansible, Terraform, Helm).
• Modern Infrastructure: Solid understanding of deploying and managing services within containerised environments (Kubernetes, Docker) and navigating modern event-driven architectures (Apache Kafka).
• Linux Mastery: Advanced experience configuring, tuning, and monitoring Linux systems in physical data centres and cloud environments.
• Observability: Experience building out robust monitoring and alerting for data systems to proactively catch bottlenecks.
• Leadership & Autonomy: Proven ability to operate independently, prioritise workloads, and lead major technical projects from design to production.

Desirable Knowledge, Skills and Experience:

• Experience migrating bare-metal database infrastructure into private or public cloud environments.
• Experience with specific monitoring systems like Prometheus, Zabbix, or Datadog.
• Familiarity with in-memory data stores (Redis) and analytic databases (Druid).
• Experience with Elasticsearch/Kibana for logging and search.
• Knowledge of HAProxy, Nginx, or Gluster storage technologies.

UK Benefits & Perks:

• 25 days holiday in addition to bank holidays.
• Enhanced Parental Leave: 6 months full pay for birth parent, 4 weeks non-birth parent at full pay after one year employment.
• 5 extra 'Partnerize Parental Days' each year.
• Private Medical Insurance through Vitality.
• Enhanced pension contributions.
• Cycle to Work scheme.
• Eye Care Vouchers.
• Life Assurance.
• Enhanced Wellness Program including access to EAP, Wellness Coaching & Wellness Fridays program.
• Regular company events and activities.

Our Commitment to Diversity & Inclusion: We are committed to attracting, developing, and advancing our outstanding team members, regardless of race, ethnic identity, sexual orientation, religion, age, gender, gender identity, physical abilities, or any other dimension of diversity. We strive to foster an environment where people can be their authentic selves, raise concerns and innovate, all without fear; where they are treated fairly and respectfully, have equal access to opportunities and resources and can contribute fully to the organization’s success. Every individual in our business is expected to live this commitment without exception.