Leads strategy, architecture, deployment, operations, automation, observability, and reliability initiatives for globally distributed database systems. Partners across engineering and business teams to improve performance, scalability, security, continuity, and operational rigor. Oversees incident troubleshooting, root-cause analyses, release processes, database change management, technology evaluation, roadmap planning, and mentoring while operating databases across Kubernetes, cloud, and bare-metal environments.
At Index Exchange, we’re reinventing how digital advertising works—at scale. As a global advertising supply-side platform, we empower the world’s leading media owners and marketers to thrive in a programmatic, privacy-first ecosystem.
We’re a proud industry pioneer with over 20 years of experience accelerating the ad technology evolution. Our proprietary tech is trusted by some of the world’s largest brands and media owners and plays a crucial role in keeping the internet open, accessible, and largely free.
We process more than 550 billion real-time auctions every day (in comparison, Google processes 8.5 billion searches per day) with ultra-low latency. Our platform is vertically integrated from servers to networks and runs primarily on our own metal and cloud infrastructure. This end-to-end infrastructure is designed to provide both stability and agility, enabling us to adapt quickly as the market evolves.
At the core of it all is our engineering-first culture. Our engineers tackle internet-scale problems across tight-knit, global teams. From moving petabytes of data and optimizing with AI to making real-time infrastructure decisions, Indexers have the agency and influence to shape the future of advertising. We move fast, build thoughtfully, and stay grounded in our core values.
About The Role
Join our global organization at the forefront of innovation in the Ad-Tech industry. We are seeking a dynamic and experienced Staff Database Reliability Engineer to lead across data domains and teams, driving strategic outcomes for our organization. The ideal candidate will be equal parts responsible for driving initiatives at deep technical level and ensuring robust operational rigor to achieve stability and scale in our data environments.
Here’s What You’ll be Doing
Leadership Across Domains:
- Provide strategic leadership across multiple domains, collaborating with cross-functional teams such as product, operations, infrastructure, and platform engineering to achieve business objectives.
- Foster a culture of innovation, continuous improvement, and collaboration within the data systems team.
- Advocate for strategic directions that reduce our complexity and tech stack footprint.
Technical Depth:
- Demonstrate deep expertise some of our core database technologies, including MySQL, MariaDB, Galera, PostgreSQL , Aerospike, Redis, Kafka, Zookeeper, Cassandra/ScyllaDB, etcd, StarRocks, Vertica.
- Deploy and operate databases at scale in decentralized cloud (k8s, external) and bare metal-based environments.
- Architect relational data structures for performance, scale, and continuity.
- Drive technical excellence by staying abreast of industry trends, evaluating emerging technologies, and making recommendations for adoption.
- Lead initiatives with other cross-functional engineering staff that are supporters and consumers of your data systems.
Operational Rigor:
- Ensure robust operational processes are in place to guarantee the stability and scalability of database environments.
- Develop and implement best practices for database administration, monitoring, and maintenance using open-source observability and instrumentation tools.
- Develop and enhance testing and production release procedures with an automation-first core principle to end-to-end delivery.
- Security/IAM minded practices and implementations, audits, traceability.
Collaboration and Communication:
- Collaborate effectively with cross-functional teams, including developers, system administrators, and data scientists, to optimize database performance and functionality.
- Communicate complex technical concepts to non-technical stakeholders, fostering understanding and alignment across the organization.
- Participate in quarterly planning events to present your roadmaps and ensure strong alignment with the objectives and the broader technology teams.
- Problem Solving and Troubleshooting:
- Lead efforts in problem identification, troubleshooting, and resolution to minimize downtime and enhance our Exchange reliability.
- Lead retrospective/rca engagements for data systems to ensure we are on a continuous improvement path.
Technology Stack:
- Key database technologies: MySQL, MariaDB, Galera, PostgreSQL, Kafka, Aerospike, Redis, StarRocks, Vertica, Trino, Iceberg.
- Automation and observability tools: Ansible, Terraform, Kubernetes, Grafana, Prometheus, Loki.
- On-premises data center operations.
- Programming languages for task automation: Python, Bash/Shell, or Golang.
Here's What You Need:
- 7+ years of proven experience as a Database Reliability Engineer, Database Administrator, general SRE with a slant to data systems, or a similar role.
- In-depth expertise of databases, with a focus on the specified key technologies (MySQL, MariaDB, Galera, PostgreSQL, Kafka, Aerospike, Redis, StarRocks, Vertica).
- Experience deploying and operating databases at scale in containerized (Kubernetes) and bare metal environments.
- Working knowledge of languages like Python, Bash/Shell, Kotlin, Java and/or golang
- Good understanding of automation tools like Ansible, Terraform, and any CI/CD tools (Helm, Gitlab workflows, ArgoCD, etc.).
- Good understanding of database change management systems like Liquibase, Flywheel, or Alembic.
- Good understanding of observability tools like Loki, Grafana, Prometheus, etc.
- Basic understanding of streaming and big data technologies like Kafka, Spark, Flink, Hadoop, Presto/Trino, or Redis (desirable).
- Demonstrated leadership, mentoring, and collaboration skills balancing strategic and tactical needs.
- Excellent problem-solving and troubleshooting abilities, diagnosing at depth for a globally distributed infrastructure with low-latency requirements.
- Effective communication skills, both technical and non-technical audiences
- If you are a seasoned database engineer with a passion for driving strategic outcomes and ensuring technical excellence, we invite you to apply and be a key player in shaping the future of our global data environments.
Why you’ll love working here:
- Comprehensive health, dental, and vision plans for you and your dependents
- Paid time off, health days, and personal obligation days plus flexible work schedules
- Competitive retirement matching plans
- Equity packages
- Generous parental leave available to birthing, non-birthing, and adoptive parents
- Annual well-being allowance plus fitness discounts and group wellness activities
- Commuter benefits and discounts, where available
- Employee assistance program
- Mental health first aid program that provides an in-the-moment point of contact and reassurance
- One day of volunteer time off per year and a donation-matching program
- Monthly town halls and regular community-led team events
- Multiple resources and programming to support continuous learning
- A workplace that supports a diverse, equitable, and inclusive environment – learn more here
Equal employment opportunity
At Index Exchange, we believe that successful products are built by teams just as diverse as the audience who uses them. As such, we are committed to equal employment opportunities. We celebrate diversity of race, color, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, age, citizenship, marital status, disability, gender identity or expression, or veteran status. Additionally, we realize that diversity is deeper than any status or classification—diversity is the human experience. For those who show grit, passion, and humility—Index will welcome you.
Accessibility for applicants with disabilities
Index Exchange welcomes and encourages individuals with disabilities to apply to work with us.
If you require an accommodation, please share the details of your request and any information how we can assist you with the hiring recruiter when they contact you. Index Exchange will make reasonable efforts to ensure accommodation requests are met throughout the recruitment process.
Index everywhere, Index anywhere
Our corporate headquarters are in Toronto, with major offices in New York, Montreal, Kitchener, London, San Francisco, and many other global cities. As a major global advertising exchange, we are committed to operating as a tightly knit global team and embracing and empowering talent wherever our colleagues may be.
AI Disclaimer: Automated tools including artificial intelligence may be used to assist in screening and assessing applicants for this role. All hiring decisions involve human review.
Vacancy Status: This posting is for an existing vacancy.
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