Senior Database Engineer
Designs, migrates, and maintains complex data architectures for Appian's Public Sector (DoW) systems: moving legacy databases to modern engines, building ETL pipelines, tuning performance, and wiring database code into CI/CD. Core stack spans SQL and NoSQL databases (SQL Server, MariaDB, Postgres, Oracle), AWS, Snowflake, and Databricks.
- Compensation
- $100K–$200K / yr
- Location
- McLean, Virginia
- Work setup
- Not specified
- Seniority
- Senior
- Employment
- Contract
- Experience
- 3+ years
- Category
- Devops
- Posted
Skills
Must have
- B.S. or B.A. in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Systems, Mathematics, or related technical field (strictly required)
- 3+ years of professional experience in data engineering, including designing, planning, and implementing tables, views, stored procedures, and functions
- Deep proficiency in relational (RDBMS) and NoSQL database technologies
- Mastery of query languages including SQL, MQL, and CQL
- Hands-on experience with Microsoft SQL Server, MariaDB, Postgres, Oracle, and AWS Cloud, Snowflake, Databricks
- Active DoD Secret Clearance (or ability to obtain) and U.S. Citizenship
- Willingness to travel up to 10% annually for customer engagement
Nice to have
- AWS Certified Database Specialty, AWS Certified Solutions Architect, CompTIA Security+, or Oracle/Microsoft platform certifications
- Demonstrated experience migrating complex schemas across database engines (e.g., Oracle to PostgreSQL/MariaDB or SQL Server to MySQL)
- Familiarity with Python, Java, C#, XML, JSON, Jenkins, Azure DevOps, and RHEL8
Full description
Here at Appian, our values of Intensity and Excellence define who we are. We set high standards and live up to them, ensuring that everything we do is done with care and quality. We approach every challenge with ambition and commitment, holding ourselves and each other accountable to achieve the best results. When you join Appian, you’ll be part of a passionate team dedicated to accomplishing hard things, together.
Database Engineers in Appian’s Public Sector Customer Success department build the scalable foundation behind mission-critical systems that power the world’s most demanding enterprises and government organizations.
Location: McLean, VA | Work Model: In-Office / Hybrid
About the Team
Appian’s Customer Success Public Sector team builds mission driven solutions that ensure peak performance, high availability, and data security for key Department of War (DoW) initiatives. We empower government organizations to modernize legacy systems using AI-Powered Process Automation and Enterprise-Grade Orchestration, ensuring seamless data access at scale.
The Opportunity
As a Senior Database Engineer, you will design, develop, and maintain a complex data architecture to support our long-term DoW efforts. With extensive experience with Relational Database Management Services (RDMS) and NoSQL databases, you will architect a data architecture for the program that will be capable of handling extremely large datasets, migrate legacy data into the modern architecture, and ensure high availability and performance for the systems being implemented.
What You’ll Do
- Design and develop database architectures and data models to support the customer’s contract requirements by working closely with the Appian team to build logical and physical data models.
- Analyze legacy database structures to identify incompatibilities, data type mismatches, and migration risks before moving workloads to the cloud.
- Convert legacy stored procedures, triggers, views, and functions into target-compatible languages (such as PL/SQL or SQL), rewriting logic.
- Identify and update hardcoded SQL queries within application source code to ensure compatibility with the new database engine.
- Establish ETL functions to clean, transform, and transport legacy data into the new application environment.
- Configure, implement, and monitor enterprise database clusters
- Tune database objects for performance, and create indices on tables as needed.
- Integrate existing and new database objects into CI/CD pipelines to improve code reliability and consistency.