Database Reliability Engineer (DBRE)

Database Reliability Engineer (DBRE) - MongoDB & SQL | Fully Remote | 12-Month Contract
Location: Fully remote (offshore)
Contract: 12 months
Sector: Aviation - a leading operator
The role
We are looking for a Database Reliability Engineer to embed with a leading aviation operator and take ownership of reliability, performance and observability across their database estate.
This is a deep, hands-on engineering role rather than a ticket queue. MongoDB is the primary technology and the role demands real depth in it. Percona and MySQL sit alongside as a genuine second pillar, with PostgreSQL also present. Everything runs on AWS and is managed through Terraform.
You would own performance tuning, prove out disaster recovery, build the monitoring and alerting, and lead the response when something breaks, working as an extension of the client's own engineering team.
What we need to see
Deep, hands-on MongoDB. Replica sets, sharding, index and query optimisation, upgrades, and backup and DR you have designed and tested yourself. Production depth, not familiarity
Strong Percona and MySQL. Percona Server, XtraDB Cluster or MySQL at production scale, including replication topology, tuning and operational ownership
Solid AWS. Running databases on AWS, including RDS and Aurora, plus the surrounding networking, IAM, storage and monitoring
Genuine Terraform depth. Modules you have authored, state management, deployment pipelines. Adjacent automation tooling will not cover this
5+ years of hands-on database administration in production
Backup, recovery and DR you have actually executed, not just configured
Monitoring and observability: Prometheus, Grafana, PMM or credible equivalents
Strong communication. This role sits inside the client's team, so explaining risk clearly matters as much as fixing it
The background that stands out
The client places real weight on where you have done this work. If you have run database estates in finance, payments, trading, telecoms or anywhere else that downtime is immediately visible and expensive, that is the operational discipline they are hiring for. Aviation, aerospace or other safety-critical experience is equally welcome.
Who this is not for
This is a hands-on database operations role. It is not a fit for Data Engineer, BI Developer or Data Scientist profiles, or for anyone whose MongoDB experience stops at familiarity.

Work arrangement
Yes