Overview
Database Site Reliability Engineer
The Role
We are looking for a highly motivated engineer to join our Database team in a fast-paced, technology-driven financial environment.
This role would suit either an exceptional graduate with a strong technical foundation or an engineer in the early stages of their career who wants to develop deep expertise in database engineering.
We are looking for someone who is technically curious, learns quickly, enjoys understanding how complex systems work, and is particularly interested in how AI, automation and modern engineering practices can change the way database teams operate.
We want someone who will learn the fundamentals deeply, while also helping us rethink and automate how we work.
AI & Automation
A primary focus of the role initially will be exploring how AI can become part of the team’s everyday engineering workflow, identifying practical opportunities to improve how we investigate, automate and operate our database platforms.
We want you to help us identify and build practical uses of AI, including:
- AI-assisted diagnosis of database and application performance issues
- Analysing execution plans, SQL and database telemetry
- Automating operational investigation and routine database workflows
- Building internal tools and agents around database operations
- Improving monitoring, alerting and incident investigation
- Turning internal documentation and operational knowledge into useful AI-assisted tools
- Using AI to accelerate scripting, engineering and problem solving
We are interested in practical applications that make engineers faster, improve how we work and make our systems more reliable.
Database Engineering
Alongside this, you will develop deep database engineering expertise across a large, mature estate supporting business-critical financial systems.
As you progress in the role, you will develop deeper expertise across areas including:
- Database administration, performance and troubleshooting
- SQL and PL/SQL performance analysis and optimisation
- Database monitoring, capacity and reliability
- Backup, recovery, resilience and disaster recovery
- Linux and scripting
- Database upgrades, patching and lifecycle management
- Automation of repetitive operational tasks
- Analysis of database performance and operational telemetry
- Working with application and infrastructure engineering teams to diagnose complex production issues
What we’re looking for
We need someone with strong aptitude, intellectual curiosity and an engineering mindset, who is motivated to learn quickly and tackle complex problems.
You should have:
- A strong interest in databases and how complex systems behave
- Excellent analytical and problem-solving ability
- A willingness to investigate problems deeply rather than stopping at the first explanation
- Some programming or scripting experience
- Good SQL fundamentals, or a strong desire to develop them
- A strong interest in AI/LLMs and their practical application to engineering
- The ability and motivation to learn quickly in a demanding technical environment
- Good communication skills and the confidence to work with experienced engineers
Beneficial Experience
Experience or exposure to some of the following would be beneficial:
- Oracle or other enterprise database platforms
- Linux
- Python or shell scripting
- Cloud platforms
- Infrastructure automation
Who We're Looking For
This role is suited to either a high-potential graduate with a strong technical foundation, or an early-career engineer who has already developed experience in databases, infrastructure or software engineering.
You might be:
A strong graduate in Computer Science, Engineering, Mathematics or a related technical discipline who wants to develop deep expertise in databases and production engineering while working extensively with AI and automation.
Or:
An early-career engineer with approximately 1–3 years of experience who already understands some database or infrastructure fundamentals and wants significantly more technical depth and responsibility.
In either case, we are looking for someone with the curiosity, aptitude and drive to develop deep database engineering expertise while helping us accelerate the practical adoption of AI and automation.
The Environment
Our databases support a mature, high-performance financial technology environment.
The pace is fast, the systems matter, and the technical problems can be complex. You will work alongside experienced engineers and will be expected to learn quickly, ask good questions and progressively take ownership.
In return, this is an opportunity to develop deep database engineering expertise, gain hands-on experience in a demanding production environment, and apply AI to real-world infrastructure and operational challenges.
We want to develop an engineer who understands databases deeply and can help define what database engineering looks like in an AI-enabled organisation.