Sr Postgres Database Administrator

Why AIS?

When you join AIS, you’re joining a mission-driven team that’s passionate about making a difference. You’ll work on projects that matter, alongside industry-leading experts, in an environment that fosters innovation, driving client success, and empowering our team to make a lasting impact. As an employee-owned company, we value collaboration, inclusivity, continuous growth, and shared success.

• Employee Ownership: Your contributions directly impact the company’s success, and you share in its achievements.
• Continuous Learning: Access to resources, training, and mentorship to support your professional growth.
• Inclusive Culture: A workplace where diversity is celebrated, and everyone’s voice is valued.
• Mission-Driven Work: Engage in projects that make a meaningful difference for our clients and communities.

What are we looking for?

At AIS, we're looking for more than just skills - we're looking for driven individuals who are passionate about making a difference, eager to grow, and aligned with our core principles.

Working@AIS

At AIS, we are dedicated to providing our employees with diverse opportunities to grow their careers while supporting a variety of impactful projects. For this position, we are seeking a talented individual to join AIS as a Lead Infrastructure Engineer.

• Core Knowledge & Skills: Aligns infrastructure strategy to business goals, leads large projects, applies compliance frameworks, designs high availability/disaster recovery and performance optimization patterns, and shapes deployment pipeline design.
• Work & Complexity: Directs cross-team programs, performs advanced tuning, implements high availability/failover architectures, leads audits, plans growth, and manages budgets.
• Quality & Independence: Delivers high-quality outcomes, sets team standards, introduces innovative solutions, and makes high-impact decisions.
• Teamwork & Communication: Leads the engineering team, develops talent, resolves conflicts, and communicates effectively with senior leadership and stakeholders.
• Consulting & Engagement: Provides high-level consulting to leadership, builds roadmaps, negotiates vendor contracts, and sponsors innovation initiatives.

As your initial project assignment, you will support the unique needs of our client as a Sr Postgres Database Administrator.

Project Summary

The PostgreSQL Database Administrator (DBA) SME will serve as the technical authority for enterprise PostgreSQL environments, leading the design, implementation, optimization, and security of mission‑critical database systems. This role supports high‑availability architectures and compliance‑driven environments, guiding database strategy, performance tuning, and data protection initiatives across the organization.

Key Responsibilities

• Serve as the PostgreSQL Subject Matter Expert SME, providing architectural guidance, standards, and best practices
• Install, configure, upgrade, and maintain PostgreSQL database clusters, including high availability (HA) and disaster recovery (DR) environments
• Design and implement HA/DR solutions using streaming replication, logical replication, and automated failover
• Perform database performance tuning, query optimization, and capacity planning for enterprise systems
• Coordinate changes to computer databases and ensure operational stability
• Manage database security, including roles, permissions, encryption, and auditing
• Develop and support backup and recovery strategies, including WAL archiving and Point‑In‑Time Recovery (PITR)
• Troubleshoot and resolve database issues, outages, and performance bottlenecks
• Automate database administration tasks using scripting languages such as Bash and Python
• Plan, coordinate, and implement security measures to safeguard databases
• Ensure compliance with applicable security and regulatory standards (e.g., STIG, RMF, NIST)

Required for This Opportunity

• Bachelor’s degree in Information Technology, Computer Science, or a related field (or equivalent experience)
• Minimum 10 years of experience as a PostgreSQL Database Administrator
• Deep expertise in PostgreSQL internals, including WAL, MVCC, vacuuming, and indexing
• Strong experience with PostgreSQL replication and clustering technologies
• Advanced knowledge of SQL performance tuning and query optimization
• Hands‑on experience with backup, recovery, and disaster recovery planning
• Experience administering PostgreSQL in cloud environments, including AWS RDS
• Familiarity with monitoring and logging tools such as Splunk and AWS CloudWatch
• Strong scripting and automation skills (Bash, Python, or similar)
• Top Secret Clearance is required.

Nice to Have Skills

• Experience supporting large‑scale or mission‑critical enterprise environments
• Familiarity with compliance‑driven or regulated systems
• Experience documenting database architectures, standards, and operational procedures
• Exposure to DevSecOps or Infrastructure‑as‑Code practices

At AIS, we are committed to offering competitive and fair compensation that reflects the skills, experience, and contributions of each team member. The targeted base salary range for this role is $121,000-$182,000 per year. Please note that this range is provided as a guideline and the final offer will be based on several factors, including but not limited to, skillset and competencies, level of experience, education, certifications, and location. We value transparency in our hiring process and are happy to discuss how your unique qualifications align with our compensation structure during the interview process.

Applied Information Sciences does not discriminate on the basis of race, national origin, religion, color, gender, sexual orientation, age, disability, protected veteran status, or any other basis. Employment decisions are based solely on qualifications, merit, and business needs.