Database Engineer

Company Overview

Wavelo is a SaaS business on a mission to make telecoms a breeze. We provide flexible software that modernizes how communication service providers (CSPs) do business, helping them drive more value, focus on customer experience, and scale their operations faster. As part of Tucows (NASDAQ:TCX, TSX:TC)—one of the world's largest Internet services companies—Wavelo is backed by outstanding resources and talent. We embrace a people-first philosophy that is rooted in respect, trust, and flexibility. We believe that whatever works for our employees is what works best for us. It's also why the majority of our roles are remote-first, meaning you can work from anywhere you can connect to the Internet!

Job Title

Database Reliability Engineer (DBRE)

Remote Location

Remote - Canada

About the Opportunity

We are looking for a highly skilled Database Reliability Engineer (DBRE) with deep expertise in PostgreSQL at scale. In this role, you will design, operationalize, and optimize the data persistence layer that powers large-scale, mission-critical systems. You'll work closely with SRE, Platform, and Engineering teams to ensure performance, reliability, automation, and operational excellence across the database environment. This is a hands-on engineering role focused on building resilient data infrastructure—well beyond traditional database administration.

Job Responsibilities

• Design, implement, and operate highly available PostgreSQL clusters including physical/logical replication, sharding, partitioning, and failover automation
• Optimize query performance and indexing strategies for large-scale, high-volume workloads
• Perform capacity planning, growth forecasting, and workload modeling
• Own high-availability strategies including automatic failover, multi-region deployments, and disaster recovery
• Build and maintain automation for provisioning, configuration, backups and recovery, failovers, vacuum tuning, and schema management
• Develop monitoring and alerting systems for PostgreSQL clusters
• Lead response during database incidents including performance regressions, replication lag, deadlocks, bloat, and storage failures
• Conduct root-cause analysis and implement long-term fixes for production issues
• Partner with software engineers to review SQL queries, optimize schemas, and ensure effective use of PostgreSQL features
• Provide guidance on database design patterns, migrations, version upgrades, and best practices

Requirements

• 7+ years of hands-on PostgreSQL experience in large-scale, high-volume production environments
• Deep understanding of PostgreSQL internals including MVCC, WAL processing, vacuum behavior, locking, and query planning
• Strong expertise in WAL, MVCC, vacuum tuning, query planner, indexing, and logical replication
• Advanced SQL and strong schema design and query optimization skills
• Experience designing and operating highly available database clusters with automated failover
• Strong performance tuning skills (query optimization, indexing, workload tuning)
• Ability to diagnose database and system issues including query plans, I/O, memory usage, WAL growth, and table/index bloat
• Experience with backup and recovery strategies including point-in-time recovery (PITR) and durability planning
• Familiarity with observability and monitoring tools (Metrics, alerting, and performance dashboards with Grafana)
• Understanding of distributed systems concepts including service discovery and consensus (e.g., Consul)
• Strong Linux systems knowledge (performance tuning, resource management)
• Experience building automation using Go or Python
• Experience with monitoring tools such as Prometheus, Grafana, Datadog, PMM, and pg_stat_statements
• Solid experience with Linux systems and networking fundamentals
• Strong troubleshooting and problem-solving skills in production environments
• Knowledge of security, compliance, encryption, auditing, and access control
• Familiarity with AI-assisted tools (e.g., Claude, Windsurf, GitHub Copilot)

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with connection pooling and load balancing (PgBouncer, HAProxy)
• Experience with high-availability solutions (Patroni or similar tools)
• Exposure to event streaming and CDC (Kafka, Debezium)
• Experience supporting 24/7 production environments
• Experience with PostgreSQL backup tools (Barman, pgBackRest, WAL-G)
• Familiarity with Traefik or similar infrastructure components

Salary and Benefits

The base salary range for this position is $126,100 to $140,100 CAD. Range may vary on a number of factors including location, experience, and qualifications. Tucows believes in a total rewards offering that includes fair compensation and generous benefits including:

• Remote-first work environment
• People-first philosophy rooted in respect, trust, and flexibility
• Comprehensive benefits package
• Total rewards offering
• Commitment to diversity, inclusion, and equality
• AI-enabled tools to enhance productivity

How to Apply

To apply for this position, please submit your application through our career portal. You will need to provide:

• First and Last Name
• Email Address
• Phone Number
• Resume/CV (PDF, DOC, DOCX, TXT, or RTF format)
• Cover Letter (optional)
• LinkedIn Profile
• Response to screening questions about your experience with infrastructure automation tools, monitoring tools, PostgreSQL versions, and AI tools

Wavelo and Tucows are committed to inclusion across race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status. We celebrate multiple approaches and diverse points of view. Individuals with disabilities are provided reasonable accommodation to participate in the job application or interview process.