Database Engineer

Database Engineer (Hybrid)

*No Visa Sponsorship is available for this position.

About the Cornell Lab of Ornithology

The Cornell Lab of Ornithology is a globally recognized leader in technology, data management, and large-scale citizen science supporting birds and biodiversity conservation. We curate more than a petabyte of digital assets, one billion bird sightings, and leverage innovative big data analysis tools and machine learning to produce web applications and services to empower a global community of bird and nature enthusiasts, researchers, conservationists, and educators. We rely on a team of high-performance engineers to help navigate intriguing technical challenges to provide data-driven services, learning platforms, and science communications supporting biodiversity and conservation communities in all corners of the globe. This role will develop technical infrastructure and services that support numerous user-facing applications, including eBird, Merlin, Macaulay Library, Birds of the World, and BirdCast. 

The Opportunity

While position responsibilities vary, every member of our community is expected to foster a culture of belonging and a psychologically healthy work environment by communicating across differences; being cooperative, collaborative, open, and welcoming; showing respect, compassion, and empathy; engaging and supporting others regardless of background or perspective; speaking up when others are being excluded or treated inappropriately; and supporting work/life integration of oneself and others.

The Database Engineer is expected to:

Design, develop, and maintain complex database schemas, stored procedures, SQL queries and related database services for the Cornell Lab of Ornithology (CLO). Participate actively in the design and evolution of CLO database infrastructure, including rearchitecting the data warehouse providing aggregated data for application and end-user needs. Work closely with application developers and other technical staff to design, test, and troubleshoot database structures and queries. Design, develop, and maintain scheduled jobs for data processing, monitoring, and alerting. Carry out and assist others with data migration, transformation, import, and export, including designing and implementing solutions to meet data reporting needs. Stay current on relevant database best practices and technologies.

What We Need

Required Qualifications:

• Bachelor’s degree in computer science or related field. or equivalent combination of education and experience.
• Three (3) plus years relevant experience or equivalent combination working with large relational databases in a 24x7 production environment and collaborating with a team of engineers.
• Exceptional SQL development and query performance tuning skills.
• Experience with relational database table design.
• Experience writing database functions in a procedural language such as PL/pgSQL.
• Experience with ETL architecture and implementation.
• Experience with cloud infrastructure services from major vendors (e.g., AWS, Azure).
• Experience with container orchestration systems (e.g., Kubernetes, Docker).
• Experience with continuous integration, deployment, and automation technology such as Jenkins.
• Experience using collaborative source code versioning with Git.
• Proven experience documenting and testing code. 
• Ability to troubleshoot and solve database performance and functionality issues in a production environment.
• Ability to work weekends or evenings when participating in the 24x7 on call duty rotation.
• Strong problem-solving and critical thinking skills, and excellent written and oral communication skills.
• Ability to work both independently and collaboratively, and to build working relationships to solve problems and achieve common goals in a multidisciplinary environment.
• Ability to establish realistic goals and deliver work on schedule, handle multiple concurrent tasks and priorities, and adapt to changing priorities, situations and demands.
• Must be able to use sound judgment in decision making and in accomplishing tasks that are urgent or of a sensitive or confidential nature.

If you have all those things, great! We have a few more things that we would prefer you to have, but it’s ok if you don’t.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Advanced degree in computer science or related field.
• Experience writing complex SQL and procedures for PostgreSQL databases and PostGIS. 
• Experience with NoSQL databases.
• Familiarity with the Linux command-line and experien