Senior Platform Engineer I - Database Platform - Python in London

Wise is one of the fastest growing companies in Europe and we’re on a mission: to make money without borders the new normal. We transferred over £118 billion in the Financial Year 2024 alone, and we’re growing fast.

Current banking systems don’t let us send, spend or receive money across borders easily, quickly, or cheaply. You’ll work on high-scale systems used by hundreds of engineers, shaping how we run databases globally through automation, observability, and platform thinking - developing the internal database platform, automation, and tooling that powers hundreds of databases across multiple environments.

Our team provides “Databases as a Service” to the rest of Wise, managing a large, critical database estate of ~1,000 instances. You’ll design, build and operate the systems, tooling, and automation that make this possible - ensuring reliability, scalability, and security at every step. You'll take long-term ownership of key platform components and are accountable for their engineering excellence and outcomes.

We’re looking for a Senior Platform Engineer to join our Database Platform team. You’ll help build and operate a global platform that’s scalable, reliable, and secure - developing the internal database platform, automation, and tooling that powers hundreds of databases across multiple environments. You’ll work on high-scale systems used by hundreds of engineers, shaping how we run databases globally.

We are evaluating YugabyteDB as our distributed SQL engine. At this level you will lead technical evaluations, define adoption strategies and own significant aspects of the progression from proof‑of‑concept to production and ongoing operations of this engine. This will involve working with other senior engineers and the platform programme team.

We believe in automation, programmatic implementation, and reusable design. You’ll think holistically about the ecosystem, while also delivering real solutions - collaborating across the Platform tribe to make our systems more resilient and developer‑friendly. At this, you help set and evolve technical standards, design patterns, and best practices for the platform.

As we scale, we need engineers who can simplify complex infrastructure, build guardrails, and deliver platforms that help product teams move fast - without compromising reliability or security. You proactively identify technical debt and plan remediation work to keep risk within appetite.

You’ll work closely with other Platform and Data teams to ensure best practices are followed and the right abstractions are in place. You provide strong technical input into product and platform roadmaps, explaining why work is prioritised and what impact it delivers.

What you’ll do:

• Design, build, and evolve our internal cloud‑based database platform.
• Own the technical roadmap and delivery for the YugabyteDB platform components you are responsible for.
• Drive the design, validation and rollout of YugabyteDB‑based platform components (PoC → pilot → production) in collaboration with senior engineers.
• Lead these initiatives end‑to‑end, optimising for predictable delivery and measurable outcomes.
• Implement automation for provisioning, upgrades, backups and routine operations for Yugabyte clusters.
• Define the long‑term automation strategy, including migrations, upgrades, and failure recovery patterns.
• Help embed security and compliance controls (encryption, auth, RBAC, network controls) into Yugabyte platform components.
• Be accountable for the availability, reliability, and security of the systems you own.
• Collaborate with product teams, SREs and DBAs to apply platform guardrails for services adopting Yugabyte.
• Act as the escalation point for your area, leading minor and major incident resolution and post‑incident reviews.
• Mentor and coach other engineers, support onboarding, and actively reduce single points of failure.
• Participate in on‑call rotations and provide senior escalation support when required.
• Represent the team in cross‑tribe or cross‑company engineering efforts and guilds.
• Participate in interviewing and hiring activities, following best practices and helping maintain a high engineering bar.

What you’ll need:

• Significant Platform Engineering experience, with demonstrated senior ownership of production platform systems at scale.
• Experience with cloud infrastructure (AWS or GCP).
• Solid understanding of software engineering principles - writing secure, testable, maintainable code.
• Proficiency with Cloud APIs and DevOps tooling (Terraform, Ansible, CI/CD, Teleport).
• Clear communicator who collaborates well across teams.
• Ability to clearly articulate technical trade‑offs, business impact, and customer value.
• Experience leading or significantly contributing to incident response and post‑incident improvement.

Highly sought:

• Practical experience with distributed databases at scale (YugabyteDB preferred, or CockroachDB/TiDB/Cloud Spanner).
• Deep operational expertise with distributed SQL systems in production.
• Experience or strong interest in implementing migration patterns (CDC/logical replication, verification and rollback) and automation for provisioning, backups and upgrades.
• Demonstrated leadership of migration strategy and execution.
• Experience building Database‑as‑a‑Service platforms or internal developer tooling.
• Experience influencing technical or product roadmaps.

For everyone, everywhere. We’re people building money without borders — without judgement or prejudice, too. We believe teams are strongest when they are diverse, equitable and inclusive. We’re proud to have a truly international team, and we celebrate our differences. Inclusive teams help us live our values and make sure every Wiser feels respected, empowered to contribute towards our mission and able to progress in their careers.