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

Are you a tech-savvy problem solver who loves birds, databases, and SQL development? We are looking for a database engineer to help build the next generation of bird conservation tools! In this role, you’ll: Design, develop, and maintain complex database infrastructure, SQL code, and ETL pipelines that support bird research, conservation, and public engagement. Shape our technical future by helping to build scalable cloud-based platforms. Collaborate across teams to integrate and optimize our database infrastructure, creating and supporting seamless high-performance systems.

The primary responsibilities include:

• Design, develop, and maintain complex database schemas, stored procedures, SQL queries and related database services for the Center for Avian Population Studies and Macaulay Library at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology (CLO).
• Participate actively in the design and evolution of our 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 up to date on the latest database best practices, processes, and technologies.
• Contribute to the overall success of the engineering team.

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.

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 of relevant experience 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.
• 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