About this role.
This Senior Database Administrator role supports core infrastructure for a global open-finance platform, with responsibility for high-throughput MariaDB/MySQL environments. The position emphasizes scaling distributed clusters, improving availability and disaster recovery, and automating database operations through infrastructure-as-code and GitOps practices. The DBA will partner closely with SRE and service teams to improve observability, security, performance, and operational readiness. It includes on-call participation, with an organizational focus on reducing toil and making support work predictable through preventative engineering.
Role DNA
A quick view of the complexity, pace, ownership and collaboration implied by the job description.
Job Complexity
5/5Pace & Pressure
4/5Autonomy Level
5/5Communication Load
4/5Salary analysis
Estimated compensation compared with the broader US market for similar roles.
Core skills
Skills and capabilities most closely associated with this opportunity.
Sample interview questions
I would first establish the scope and business impact by reviewing replication metrics, binlog position, relay-log status, query latency, host resource utilization, and recent deployment activity. I would identify whether lag is caused by write volume, long-running queries, locking, network constraints, replica configuration, or hardware saturation, then apply the least risky corrective action. After recovery, I would document the root cause and add monitoring or capacity safeguards to prevent recurrence.
I design for clear recovery objectives, including defined RPO and RTO targets, verified backup integrity, secure storage, and documented ownership. Backups must be tested through regular restore exercises rather than assumed to work. For critical multi-region systems, I would also validate failover procedures, dependency sequencing, access controls, and communication plans during realistic recovery drills.
I use version-controlled infrastructure definitions to make database-related changes reproducible, reviewable, and auditable. Terraform can manage cloud resources and supporting infrastructure, while GitOps workflows can standardize deployment configuration and approvals. I would apply progressive rollout, validation checks, and rollback plans to reduce risk for changes affecting database availability or performance.
I would start by mapping alerts to actionable service risks such as availability, replication health, storage exhaustion, error rates, latency, and backup failures. Alerts should have clear thresholds, ownership, runbooks, and severity definitions, while noisy or non-actionable alerts should be consolidated or removed. I would regularly review incidents and paging data to ensure the alerting system detects meaningful problems early without creating fatigue.
I partner early in design and readiness discussions to review data models, indexing, query patterns, connection management, capacity assumptions, and failure behavior. I provide measurable recommendations using query analysis and production telemetry, while helping teams adopt safe operational patterns such as migration reviews and load testing. The goal is to enable teams to move quickly while making reliability and database hygiene part of their normal delivery process.
Building the Future of Open Finance
Payward – the parent company behind Kraken, NinjaTrader, Breakout, xStocks, Payward Services and CF Benchmarks – has spent the last 15 years building one of the most modern and globally accessible financial infrastructure platforms in the industry, built to advance an open, global financial system.
Before you apply, we encourage you to explore our culture page to understand what drives us and how we work.
The team
You’ll join a senior team of DBAs and SREs responsible for the database platform that underpins many of Kraken’s most critical services. This group combines deep operational expertise with a platform mindset, designing systems that allow engineering teams to innovate quickly while maintaining strong guarantees around performance, security, and reliability.
The team is entering an exciting phase of evolution as Kraken continues to expand globally. Over the next year, we are focused on strengthening our operational excellence, evolving our database environments to support significant future scale, and increasing automation and self-service so that database operations become more efficient, at scale.
This is not a traditional “keep the lights on” DBA team. Our work centers on scaling distributed MariaDB environments, shaping reliable patterns for high-traffic systems, and transforming operational knowledge into automated, auditable workflows that uplift the entire engineering organization.
It’s a collaborative, high-ownership environment where clarity, rigor, and continuous improvement are part of how we operate. If you enjoy building robust distributed systems and designing platforms that make engineering teams faster and safer by default, you’ll find a strong home here.
The opportunity
Scale and tune high-throughput MariaDB clusters to support continued global expansion and new product initiatives.
Strengthen high-availability, disaster-recovery, and backup approaches through sound design and regularly validated procedures.
Reduce manual operational work by building automation, improving process consistency, and enabling safe, low-friction database workflows.
Improve observability and alert quality by championing meaningful metrics, reducing noise, and ensuring operational clarity across environments.
Enhance database security through robust access controls, disciplined patching and upgrade practices, and secure operational patterns.
Contribute to modern platform initiatives, including containerized environments, infrastructure-as-code workflows, and reproducible deployments.
Partner with service teams to drive better performance patterns, operational readiness, and database hygiene across the engineering organization.
Participate in our on-call rotations with a long-term focus on making on-call predictable, informed by high-quality signal and preventative engineering.
What you Bring
5+ years operating MariaDB/MySQL in high-volume production environments, including tuning, replication, and troubleshooting.
Strong understanding of high-availability patterns, distributed database behavior, and practical failure scenarios.
Hands-on experience with database proxies or load-balancing layers (HAProxy, ProxySQL, MaxScale, or similar).
Practical experience with CI/CD, GitOps, and Infrastructure-as-Code workflows (Terraform experience ideal).
Solid cloud, Linux, and networking fundamentals.
Experience with containers and orchestration platforms (building container images and managing Kubernetes workloads at scale).
Strong security instincts around access control, upgrade processes, and safe operational workflows.
Observability expertise: monitoring, alerting hygiene, and readiness for incident response.
Strong communication and collaboration skills with the ability to partner with stakeholders, negotiate long-term plans, write formal documentation and tie success to specific metrics and KPIs.
Nice to haves
Experience with SRE methodologies such as error budgets, operational reviews, or reliability programs.
Strong scripting or programming ability (Python or Rust preferred) used to build automation and internal tools.
Hands-on experience with GitOps tooling (ArgoCD, GitHub Actions, GitLab CI).
Exposure to multi-region or disaster-recovery designs.
Interest in cryptocurrency or decentralized systems.
Unless a specific application deadline is stated in the job posting, applications are accepted on an ongoing basis.
Please note, applicants are permitted to redact or remove information on their resume that identifies age, date of birth, or dates of attendance at or graduation from an educational institution.
We consider qualified applicants with criminal histories for employment on our team, assessing candidates in a manner consistent with the requirements of the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance.
Our commitment
Payward is powered by people from around the world and we celebrate the diverse talents, backgrounds, contributions, and unique perspectives that everyone brings to the table. We hire based on merit, seeking out people with the right abilities, knowledge, and skills for the job. We encourage you to apply for roles where you don’t fully meet the listed requirements, especially if you’re passionate or knowledgeable about crypto.
We may ask candidates to complete job-related skills or work-style assessments as part of our hiring process. These assessments evaluate competencies relevant to the role and are applied consistently across candidates for similar positions. Results are considered alongside experience and interviews, and are not the sole basis for any employment decision.
As an equal opportunity employer, we don’t tolerate discrimination or harassment of any kind, whether based on race, ethnicity, age, gender identity, citizenship, religion, sexual orientation, disability, pregnancy, veteran status, or any other protected characteristic as outlined by federal, state, or local laws.
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