Staff Database Engineer- AWS/Azure

Company Description

Founded by experienced entrepreneurs and engineers in 2016, Pismo is a technology company that provides a comprehensive processing platform for banking, card issuing and financial market infrastructure and helps customers innovate and build the next generation of banking and payment solutions. Pismo joined Visa in 2024.

Leveraging Visa’s solutions, our core platform, and an expanding suite of capabilities, Pismo addresses the technological challenges that large banks, marketplaces, and fintech companies face in migrating from legacy systems to more advanced technology in the market. Pismo’s cloud-based platform empowers firms to build and launch financial products rapidly, scaling as they grow to have a broader audience while keeping high security and availability standards.

Pismo’s 500+ employees are located in more than 10 countries around the world.

Job Description

We are looking for a Staff Database Engineer to join our global Database Engineering team. In this role, you will operate and evolve cloud-based production database environments, with deep hands-on responsibility across AWS and Azure, while helping expand our multi-cloud capabilities over time.

At Pismo, databases sit at the core of mission-critical financial systems that power global banking and payments. This role is for an engineer who wants real ownership- owning systems in production, automating at scale, and ensuring reliability in environments where availability and data integrity are non-negotiable. This is not a siloed DBA role, but a hands-on database engineering position where you design, operate, and continuously improve the systems you support.

Key Responsibilities

Database Engineering & Production Operations

• Own and operate production database environments, ensuring high availability, performance, and security
• Manage, administer, and optimize Aurora MySQL, Aurora PostgreSQL, and DynamoDB
• Monitor database health, identify risks, and troubleshoot incidents in live environments
• Implement preventive solutions to improve stability and reduce operational overhead
• Participate in a 24x7 on-call rotation supporting critical financial platforms

Cloud & Automation

• Work in an AWS-first environment, while contributing experience across Azure and/or GCP
• Collaborate closely with DevOps and Platform teams on infrastructure as code using Terraform
• Build, maintain, and improve CI/CD pipelines for database and infrastructure automation
• Drive a strong automation mindset, reducing manual effort and increasing system autonomy

Reliability, Scale & Delivery

• Support capacity planning, performance tuning, and scaling initiatives
• Design and execute backup, recovery, and disaster recovery testing
• Engage cross-functional engineering teams to deliver projects end-to-end
• Strengthen operational processes to support growing client demand and platform scale
• Contribute to the team’s technical maturity by sharing best practices and improving standards

Qualifications

Basic Qualifications:
5+ years of relevant work experience with a Bachelor’s Degree or at least 2 years of work experience with an Advanced degree (e.g. Masters, MBA, JD, MD) or 0 years of work experience with a PhD, OR 8+ years of relevant work experience.

Preferred Qualifications:

Preferred Qualifications:

• Minimum of 5 years of professional experience as a Database Administrator (DBA) or in a similar database engineering or operations role
• Strong experience working in cloud environments, with hands-on responsibility across AWS and Azure, including provisioning, day-to-day operations, and best practices
• Proven expertise in managing and administering Aurora MySQL, Aurora PostgreSQL, and DynamoDB in production environments
• Solid understanding of AWS cloud services and features relevant to database performance, availability, and security
• Good knowledge and practical experience with Terraform and infrastructure as code
• Familiarity with DevOps principles and practices, including collaboration with platform and CI/CD teams
• Strong sense of trustworthiness, discipline, and ability to work effectively in a global, remote team with minimal supervision

Additional Skills (Nice to Have):

• Knowledge of shell scripting for automation and operational tasks
• Experience with CockroachDB or other distributed / sharded database technologies
• Experience with YAML-based configuration or pipeline development
• Exposure to additional cloud platforms (such as GCP) or multi-cloud environments is a plus