Database Engineer

About the role

This Database Engineer role focuses on developing and improving Chess.com's core database infrastructure, which handles a high volume of daily chess games, user activities, and social network interactions. The position requires designing and building scalable database systems, as well as driving automation and architectural enhancements across both bare-metal and cloud environments. A key aspect of the work involves creating internal tools to streamline database deployment and operational efficiency for the engineering team.

The role also involves tackling complex data modeling for various features, including real-time gaming, puzzle systems, and social graph representation. The engineer will be responsible for building multi-regional database architectures that can manage large amounts of data with minimal latency. This includes developing data pipelines for analytics and machine learning, and continuously evaluating new technologies to improve the database platform.

Success in this position means ensuring 24/7 database availability and contributing to incident post-mortems. The engineer will implement infrastructure-as-code practices for database provisioning and collaborate with product engineering teams to design optimal data schemas and access patterns. Building robust observability and performance tooling to monitor database behavior and capacity trends is also a critical component of the role.

The salary range for this position is between $80,500 and $138,000 USD.

Skills that matter here

• MySQL: Expert-level proficiency is required for understanding internals, replication, and performance optimization of the primary database.
• Python: Used for developing tooling, automation, and data pipelines to improve database operations.
• Go: Proficiency is needed for building automation and data pipelines, similar to Python.
• Redis: Experience is necessary for designing caching architectures, pub/sub systems, and high-performance data structures.
• Linux: Advanced knowledge is crucial for understanding kernel behavior, I/O patterns, and hardware optimization for database workloads.
• Terraform: Used for implementing infrastructure-as-code practices for database provisioning and lifecycle management.

Who this role suits

• Someone with a strong background in large-scale, high-availability database systems.
• An individual who enjoys solving complex data modeling challenges and optimizing performance.
• A person who thrives on automating processes and building internal tooling to improve efficiency.
• A collaborator who can work with product engineering teams to integrate data layers effectively.

From the employer

• Design and architect database systems optimized for Chess.com's specific workloads including real-time gaming, puzzle systems, and social graph traversal
• Build internal tooling and automation to improve database deployment, migration, and operational efficiency, simplifying work streams for the broader engineering organization
• Develop data pipelines and ETL processes for analytics, machine learning features, and cross-system data synchronization
• Engineer multi-regional database architectures capable of handling massive volumes of chess games, user data, and social network interactions with minimal latency
• Solve complex data modeling challenges including chess game storage optimization, puzzle attempt tracking, and large-scale social graph representation
• Drive database platform evolution evaluating and implementing new technologies, storage engines, and architectural patterns with a bias toward continuous improvement
• Build observability and performance tooling providing deep visibility into database behavior, query patterns, and capacity trends
• Collaborate with product engineering teams to design optimal schemas, access patterns, and data layer integrations, ensuring the right people have the information they need
• Implement infrastructure-as-code practices for database provisioning, configuration, and lifecycle management with high first-time-right quality
• Participate in on-call rotation to ensure 24/7 database availability and contribute to incident post-mortems

• 5+ years of professional database engineering experience with large-scale, high-availability database systems in production environments
• Expert-level proficiency with MySQL (Percona) including internals, storage engine behavior, replication topologies, and performance optimization
• Strong software engineering skills with proficiency in Python and/or Go for tooling, automation, and data pipeline development
• Experience designing and building data pipelines using streaming or batch processing frameworks
• Strong experience with Redis for caching architectures, pub/sub systems, and high-performance data structures
• Advanced Linux systems knowledge with understanding of kernel behavior, I/O patterns, and hardware optimization for database workloads
• Experience with distributed systems concepts including CAP theorem trade-offs, consensus protocols, and partition tolerance
• Proficiency with infrastructure-as-code tools (Terraform, Ansible, Pulumi) for database infrastructure automation
• Experience with monitoring and observability platforms (Datadog, Prometheus, PMM) for building database observability solutions
• Strong understanding of query optimization including execution plans, index design, and workload analysis