Staff Database Reliability Engineer
Checkr
$195,000 - $229,000 / year
Need a reasonable accommodation to apply or interview? Contact us.
JobMinglr uses automated technology to recommend jobs based on profile information and job preferences. Match Score does not determine eligibility for a position, prevent a user from viewing or applying to a job, or make hiring decisions on behalf of an employer.
Description
About Checkr
Checkr is building the data platform to power safe and fair decisions. Over 140,000 companies and millions of people rely on Checkr for AI verification in the moments that matter most: getting a new job, a new place to live, a car ride, childcare, even a date. Customers include Uber, Pennymac, Airbnb, Doordash, and Anthropic.
We’re a team that thrives on solving complex problems with innovative solutions that advance our mission. Checkr is recognized on Forbes Cloud 100 2025 List and is a Y Combinator 2024 Breakthrough Company.
About the team/role
Reporting to the Manager, DevOps Engineering, you will lead the architecture, reliability, and operational excellence of Checkr’s core data stores. Checkr offers fantastic AI enablement, and you'll use AI tooling throughout your day-to-day. In this role, you will own database capacity planning, financial forecasting, high availability, disaster recovery, and infrastructure-as-code automation across high-scale distributed data stores. Partnering closely with Infrastructure, Site Reliability Engineering, Core Services, and Product Engineering teams, you will establish fleet-wide data governance and performance standards that power Checkr's continuous platform growth.
What you'll do
- Lead and execute the architectural design, high availability strategies including multi-region, and business continuity/disaster recovery (BCDR) solutions across Checkr’s multi-cloud database fleet.
- Inspire and drive high standards across the team by mentoring and growing engineers.
- Drive the long-term vision and strategy of database architecture at Checkr; communicate that strategy in a way that resonates with engineers and upper leadership, and propose projects that move the company towards that vision
- Ensure the security of highly sensitive data through encryption and security-first architecture
- Provision, scale, and maintain cloud database systems across production, staging, and sandbox environments using Infrastructure as Code (Terraform, Terragrunt).
- Optimize database performance at the query, schema, connection, and instance levels across PostgreSQL or MySQL, and MongoDB workloads.
- Partner with Site Reliability Engineering to build proactive observability, automated alerting, and diagnostic tooling for database health and performance metrics.
- Automate operational toil, maintenance workflows, schema migrations, and backup lifecycle policies to improve reliability and engineering velocity.
- Lead incident diagnosis, resolution, and post-incident reviews for critical database alerts and outages across customer-serving infrastructure.
What you bring
- A Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or a related technical field (or equivalent practical experience)
- 10+ years of experience designing, administering, and scaling relational and non-relational database storage architectures in production environments.
- Deep expertise managing and tuning MongoDB and PostgreSQL or MySQL database topologies at high volume and scale.
- Understanding of software engineering fundamentals, including data structures and software design principles, and the ability to apply them to solve technical challenges.
- Extensive hands-on experience with AWS database and storage ecosystems, including RDS, Aurora, ElastiCache, MongoDB Atlas, and S3.
- Demonstrated track record of automating cloud infrastructure and database operations using Terraform, Terragrunt, and modern scripting languages.
- Strong technical leadership skills with a proven ability to guide engineering teams through database schema design, zero-downtime migrations (e.g., gh-ost), and security compliance standards.
- An A-player mindset with a strong bias for action: you raise the bar, move with urgency, stay resilient through ambiguity, and take ownership to deliver meaningful outcomes.
#LI-TD1
Pay Transparency Disclosure
We use geographic cost of labor as an input to develop ranges for our roles and as such, each location where we hire may have a different range. If this role is remote, we have listed the top to the bottom of the possible range, but we will specify the target range for an exact location when you are selected for a recruiting discussion. For more information on our compensation philosophy, see our website.
What We Offer
- A fast-paced and collaborative environment
- Learning and development allowance
- Competitive cash and equity compensation, and opportunity for advancement
- 100% medical, dental, and vision coverage
- Up to $25K reimbursement for fertility, adoption, and parental planning services
- Flexible PTO policy
- Monthly wellness stipend
At Checkr, we believe an in office work environment strengthens collaboration, drives innovation, and encourages connection. Our hub locations are Denver, CO; San Francisco, CA; Nashville, TN; and Santiago, Chile. Individuals are expected to work from the office 3+ days a week. In-office perks are provided, such as lunch five times a week, a commuter stipend, and an abundance of snacks and beverages. A relocation stipend may be available for those willing to relocate to a Checkr hub location.
Equal Employment Opportunities at Checkr
Checkr is committed to building the best product and company, which requires hiring talented and qualified individuals with a diverse set of perspectives and lived experiences. Checkr believes in hiring people of all backgrounds, including those whose histories are impacted by the justice system in accordance with local, state, and/or federal laws, including the San Francisco’s Fair Chance Ordinance.
Applicant Privacy Policy
If you are a California resident or are located in Alberta or British Columbia, our Applicant Privacy Policy applies to our collection and processing of your personal information when you apply for a role with us or otherwise participate in our recruitment process.
For applicants in Massachusetts: It is unlawful in Massachusetts to require or administer a lie detector test as a condition of employment or continued employment. An employer who violates this law shall be subject to criminal penalties and civil liability.
*Legitimate Checkr emails will always include our official domain name after the @ symbol (e.g., name@checkr.com or name@ext.checkr.com).
Benefits
- A fast-paced and collaborative environment
- Learning and development allowance
- Competitive cash and equity compensation, and opportunity for advancement
- 100% medical, dental, and vision coverage
- Up to $25K reimbursement for fertility, adoption, and parental planning services
- Flexible PTO policy
- Monthly wellness stipend
About this role
Checkr is seeking a Staff Database Reliability Engineer to own the architecture and operational excellence of its core data infrastructure. Reporting to the Manager of DevOps Engineering, you'll lead capacity planning, disaster recovery, and infrastructure automation across a multi-cloud database fleet serving millions of users. This role requires deep hands-on expertise in PostgreSQL, MySQL, and MongoDB at scale, combined with strong cloud infrastructure skills in AWS and tools like Terraform. You'll partner across infrastructure, SRE, and product teams to establish data governance standards and drive the long-term database strategy that supports Checkr's growth.
The position demands 10+ years of production database administration and architecture experience, with demonstrated ability to mentor engineers and lead through complex technical challenges like zero-downtime migrations and security compliance. You'll spend your time on high-impact work: designing multi-region availability strategies, optimizing query and schema performance, automating operational toil, and leading incident response for critical outages. The role values both technical depth and leadership—you'll need to communicate database strategy clearly to both engineers and executives while maintaining an action-oriented mindset.
This is a full-time, in-office role in Denver with a base salary of $165,000–$194,000. Checkr offers comprehensive benefits including medical, dental, and vision coverage, learning and development allowance, equity, and in-office perks like daily lunch and a commuter stipend.
How this employer is doing
average
- News: Growing or Expanding
- H1B: Sponsors Visas
- News: Legal Issue
- News: Layoffs Mentioned
In the news
Checkr’s Truv acquisition expands identity verification beyond identity, Biometric Update
This role's local market on JobMinglr
Pay for this role
$195,000 to $229,000 per year
That is the employer's posted range, and where you land in it is usually decided in one conversation. Before that conversation, run the numbers: analyze an offer for this role.
Before you apply, worth reading
How JobMinglr reads this job
Every listing here is scored against your profile before you apply: skills overlap, experience level, location and work arrangement, each weighted and explained. You see the score and the reasons, not just a list. How the matching works.