Senior Database Engineer

Kurtosys City of Cape Town, Western Cape, South Africa

THE OPPORTUNITY :

As a Senior Database Engineer, you will be a key member of the Technology Platform Engineering team, responsible for designing and building logical and physical databases as well as shaping data architecture. You will lead performance tuning efforts, including query and index optimization, and guide engineers on efficient schema design and database access. Your work will also include supporting platform migrations, cleaning up legacy schemas, reducing technical debt, improving monitoring and alerting for database health, and finding opportunities to automate database maintenance and provisioning. A strong focus on data security and compliance will be central to ensuring our platforms remain resilient and audit-ready.

While your primary focus will be on databases, this role also offers the opportunity to get hands-on experience with cloud infrastructure, automation, and platform engineering practices. You may contribute to CI / CD pipelines, infrastructure-as-code, and platform tooling, as well as help monitor shared services and automate routine operations. Collaboration with engineering, InfoSec, and operations teams will provide exposure to security, compliance, and emerging technologies such as GenAI and agent-based tools. These areas are not mandatory requirements but provide valuable learning and growth opportunities as part of the broader platform engineering team.

WHAT WE ARE LOOKING FOR :

• 6+ years of experience operating and supporting highly transactional, mission-critical database environments.
• Strong expertise in MySQL-based databases (ideally RDS), with proven experience in performance tuning, query optimisation, and execution plan analysis.
• A database-agnostic mindset with the willingness to work across multiple technologies, including relational (PostgreSQL, MSSQL, SingleStore) and NoSQL / cloud-native platforms (DynamoDB, Snowflake basics).
• Hands-on experience with AWS services such as RDS, Aurora, EC2, S3, and related cloud-native tooling.
• Solid scripting skills (Python, Bash, or PowerShell) for automation, tooling, and database operations.
• Familiarity with containerisation and orchestration (Docker, Kubernetes) and an understanding of CI / CD practices for database deployments.
• Strong communication and collaboration skills, with the ability to work across teams, explain technical concepts clearly, and support shared goals.
• A disciplined approach to change management, documentation, and compliance, with awareness of data security standards.
• Analytical and problem-solving abilities, combining logical thinking with attention to detail to deliver robust solutions.
• Curiosity and adaptability — an eagerness to explore new approaches such as AI-driven database monitoring, anomaly detection, and automation to modernise operations.

OUR TECHNOLOGY ENVIRONMENT :

You don’t need to be an expert in every one of these technologies. What matters most is strong experience with database platforms, deep understanding of database internals, and the ability to apply a database-agnostic mindset. Familiarity across multiple tools and environments will be helpful, but a focus on database technologies and performance will make you successful in this role.

BENEFITS :

FINAL THOUGHTS :

Get in touch to learn more.

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