Senior Lead Site Reliability Engineer, Database
Senior lead SRE owning the reliability, scalability, and automation of DraftKings' database infrastructure behind its high-traffic sports betting and gaming platform. Works across PostgreSQL, MySQL, MongoDB, Redis, ScyllaDB, and Aerospike, building Kubernetes operators, IaC/GitOps, and automation tooling in Go or Python.
- Compensation
- $168K–$210K / yr
- Location
- United States
- Work setup
- Remote
- Seniority
- Lead
- Employment
- Full time
- Experience
- 6+ years
- Category
- Sre
- Posted
Skills
Must have
- At least 6 years of experience in Database Reliability Engineering, Database Platform Engineering, or SRE with a strong database focus, including technical leadership on complex database infrastructur
- Deep expertise in at least one major relational database, preferably PostgreSQL, plus operational experience with MySQL, MongoDB, Redis, ScyllaDB, Aerospike, Aurora, Cloud SQL, and other managed cloud
- Strong experience building and operating stateful workloads on Kubernetes (StatefulSets, Persistent Volumes, database operators, Terraform, Pulumi, FluxCD, ArgoCD, GKE, EKS)
- Hands-on software development experience in Go or Python for automation, platform tooling, Kubernetes controllers, and APIs
- Automation-first mindset with proven experience improving reliability through observability, monitoring, SLOs, capacity planning, performance optimization, and self-service solutions
- Practical experience using AI tools such as Claude, GitHub Copilot, Cursor, or MCP to improve design, coding, documentation, and operational workflows
- Excellent leadership and communication skills with a track record of mentoring engineers, influencing architecture, and producing clear technical documentation
- May be required to obtain a state-issued gaming license as a condition of employment
Full description
At DraftKings, AI is becoming an integral part of both our present and future, powering how work gets done today, guiding smarter decisions, and sparking bold ideas. It’s transforming how we enhance customer experiences, streamline operations, and unlock new possibilities. Our teams are energized by innovation and readily embrace emerging technology. We’re not waiting for the future to arrive. We’re shaping it, one bold step at a time. To those who see AI as a driver of progress, come build the future together.
The Crown Is Yours
As a Senior Lead Reliability Engineer, Database, you'll own the reliability, scalability, and operational excellence of the database infrastructure powering one of the most demanding real time platforms in sports betting and gaming. In this role, you'll combine deep database expertise with software engineering and infrastructure automation to build resilient, self healing systems, improve platform performance, and drive reliability across cloud and on premises database environments.
What You'll Do
- Drive the technical roadmap for database reliability across PostgreSQL, MySQL, MongoDB, Redis, ScyllaDB, Aerospike, and managed cloud services, while shaping architecture for high availability, replication, partitioning, storage, and connection management.
- Design and build automation first database platforms by developing Kubernetes operators, infrastructure as code, GitOps workflows, and production quality tooling in Go or Python to automate provisioning, failover, backups, schema migrations, and lifecycle management.
- Lead operational excellence by defining service level objectives, monitoring database health, capacity, and performance, eliminating recurring reliability issues, validating backup and recovery processes, and leading critical production incidents through resolution and continuous improvement.
- Optimize database performance and cost across cloud and on premises environments by driving capacity planning, resource efficiency, storage optimization, workload consolidation, and performance tuning for large scale systems.
- Partner closely with application engineering teams to establish safe database practices, including schema reviews, migration strategies, query optimization, connection management, and zero downtime deployment processes.
- Leverage AI to improve engineering productivity and database operations through intelligent observability, anomaly detection, root cause analysis, documentation, predictive insights, and evaluation of AI generated code to ensure reliability and security.
- Mentor engineers across the organization by sharing best practices, leading design and code reviews, influencing technical direction, supporting hiring efforts, and raising the overall maturity of database reliability engineering.