Senior Database Engineer III

LivePerson (NASDAQ: LPSN) is a leader in trusted enterprise conversational AI and digital transformation. The world's leading brands use our award-winning Conversational Cloud platform to connect with millions of consumers. We power nearly a billion conversational interactions every month, providing uniquely rich data analytics and safety tools to unlock the power of conversational AI for better business outcomes. Fast Company named LivePerson the #1 Most Innovative AI Company in the world.

Job Description: Senior MySQL Database Engineer - 8+ Years Experience.

Position Overview:

We are seeking a Senior MySQL Database Engineer (L3) with 8+ years of experience managing large-scale production database environments. This role combines deep technical expertise with strategic thinking, focusing on production reliability, platform engineering, automation, and architectural evolution.

The ideal candidate will be a technical leader who can design scalable database solutions, mentor team members, drive automation initiatives, and own complex production systems. You will work with CloudSQL on GCP, lead migration projects, implement SRE best practices, and collaborate across engineering teams to ensure database reliability at scale.

This role includes participation in 24/7 on-call rotations to ensure continuous support for our critical MySQL infrastructure.

Responsibilities:

Production Reliability & Platform Engineering

• Own and architect high-availability MySQL database platforms supporting critical business systems.
• Design and implement multi-region replication strategies, disaster recovery architectures, and zero-downtime migration patterns.
• Lead incident response for critical database outages, coordinate cross-functional teams, and drive post-incident reviews.
• Define and track database SLIs/SLOs, establish reliability metrics, and implement continuous improvement programs.
• Drive capacity planning at scale, forecast growth patterns, and architect for horizontal and vertical scaling.
• Establish database standards, operational runbooks, and best practices across the organization.

Automation & Infrastructure as Code

• Lead automation initiatives to eliminate toil and improve operational efficiency.
• Design and implement database provisioning platforms using Terraform and configuration management tools.
• Build self-service workflows for database creation, schema migrations, and routine operations.
• Architect and implement GitOps-driven database deployments integrated with CI/CD pipelines.
• Develop custom tooling and automation frameworks for database operations (Python, Go, or Bash).
• Drive adoption of infrastructure as code practices across database teams.

Cloud & Hybrid Architecture

• Lead CloudSQL (GCP) operations at scale, including advanced configurations, HA setups, and cross-region deployments.
• Design and execute cloud migration strategies from on-premises to GCP (or hybrid architectures).
• Implement multi-cloud or hybrid-cloud database strategies where applicable.
• Optimize cloud costs through right-sizing, reserved instances, and architectural improvements.
• Work with GCP native services (Cloud Monitoring, Secret Manager, VPC, IAM) for secure and scalable deployments.

Performance Engineering & Optimization

• Lead performance engineering initiatives including query optimization, indexing strategies, and schema design reviews.
• Conduct advanced troubleshooting of complex performance issues across application and database layers.
• Perform deep-dive analysis using tools like pt-query-digest, Percona Toolkit, and performance_schema.
• Design database sharding and partitioning strategies for scalability.
• Review and optimize backup/restore strategies for RTO/RPO requirements.

Observability & Reliability Engineering

• Design and implement comprehensive monitoring and alerting frameworks (Prometheus, Grafana, Cloud Monitoring).
• Build custom dashboards and SLO tracking for database reliability metrics.
• Implement proactive monitoring to detect issues before they impact production.
• Establish observability standards including logging, tracing, and metrics collection.

Technical Leadership & Mentorship

• Mentor L1/L2 database engineers on technical skills, troubleshooting methodologies, and best practices.
• Conduct code reviews, design reviews, and knowledge-sharing sessions.
• Drive technical decision-making for database architecture and tooling choices.
• Collaborate with application teams, SRE teams, and platform engineers on cross-functional projects.
• Represent database engineering in architectural discussions and technical forums.

Distributed Systems & Data Infrastructure (Good to Have)

• Work with Elasticsearch for search and analytics workloads.
• Support Kafka-based data pipelines and event-driven architectures.
• Integrate databases with Kubernetes-based application platforms.
• Collaborate on data platform initiatives involving data lakes, streaming, and analytics.

Required Qualification:

• 8+ years of hands-on MySQL DBA/Engineering experience in production environments.
• Expert-level knowledge of MySQL architecture, replication (async, semi-sync, GTID), performance tuning, and troubleshooting.
• 4+ years managing Cloud SQL on GCP, including HA configurations, read replicas, and backup strategies.
• 4+ years of Infrastructure as Code experience (Terraform strongly preferred), including module development and state management.
• 4+ years with configuration management tools (Ansible, Chef, or Puppet) in production environments.
• Proven experience building and maintaining CI/CD pipelines for database changes and schema migrations.
• Strong programming/scripting skills (Python, Bash, or Go) for automation and tooling development.
• Deep Linux system administration skills and understanding of OS-level performance tuning.
• Experience with monitoring and observability tools (Prometheus, Grafana, ELK, or similar).
• Demonstrated leadership in incident response, including on-call rotations and post-mortem facilitation.
• Experience supporting large-scale production systems with strict uptime requirements (99.9%+).

Preferred Qualifications:

• Production experience with Elasticsearch (cluster management, indexing strategies, performance tuning).
• Hands-on experience with Kafka (topics, partitions, consumer groups, integration patterns).
• Led or participated in large-scale cloud migration projects (on-prem to cloud or cloud-to-cloud).
• Experience with Kubernetes and containerized database workloads (StatefulSets, operators).
• Familiarity with PostgreSQL or other RDBMS platforms.
• Experience with database security (encryption, IAM, audit logging, compliance).
• Knowledge of distributed databases or NoSQL systems (Cassandra, MongoDB, etc.).
• Exposure to data engineering tools (Airflow, dbt, Spark) and modern data architectures.
• Certifications: GCP Professional Database Engineer, MySQL Certification, or equivalent.