Senior Director, Database Reliability Engineering
- Hiring from
- United States
- Work type
- Remote
- Posted
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What You'll Do
The Avalara DBE team globally manages thousands of databases across dozens of products. Own architecture, reliability, and strategy for Avalara's global Database Engineering (DBE) function — SQL Server, MySQL, PostgreSQL, MongoDB Atlas, Confluent Kafka, Redis, and Snowflake — across AWS, GCP, OCI, and Azure.
You will be in charge of leading a distributed engineering organization spanning multiple regions and time zones, supporting applications that run active-active across US, EMEA, Brazil, and India with demanding low-latency, high-TPS requirements
What's different here: you own the full multi-cloud data stack end-to-end, with a real mandate to modernize through AI-driven automation and self-healing systems — not just keep the lights on. As a member of the Avalara Reliability Engineering Leadership you will work with peers in Platform, Product SRE, Sustainment, Network and the Engineering Operations Center to transform our data strategy and processes into an automated and AI enabled global architecture.
This roles reports to the VP, Site Reliability Engineering, partnering closely with Engineering, Platform, and Product. leadership
What Your Responsibilities Will Be
- Drive architecture strategy that balances low latency, high throughput, reliability, and cost across multi-cloud environments
- Lead investment in AI-assisted automation and self-healing systems to reduce manual toil and improve reliability at scale
- Own observability, capacity planning, access management, and audit practices across all database platforms and partner with security to ensure our data is protected.
- Participate directly in high-severity incident calls, providing technical direction and escalation support
- Mentor managers and senior engineers, and lead hiring/talent growth for the DBE org
- Influence architecture and technology decisions across engineering, beyond your direct team
- Key tools: MongoDB Atlas, Confluent Kafka, Redis, Snowflake, Grafana, Terraform, cloud-native DB services, Signal/Slack, AI/ML-based operational tooling, data layer as code
What You'll Need to be Successful
Significant database engineering/SRE experience, with experience transforming DBE technology and processes into an AI integrated solution.
Self-motivated engineering mindset — operates independently at the strategic level, sets direction rather than waiting for it
You are a manager of managers along with individual contributor across a globally distributed team who brings the vision of where our data layer is headed. You are a partner with other Reliability Engineering peer specializations, Data Science and BI, Security, Architecture and Development to build the Avalara data platform
Multi-cloud experience across at least 2-3 of: AWS, GCP, OCI, Azure — architecture, migration, and cost management
Deep technical fluency across relational, document, streaming/caching, and cloud data platforms to guide and unblock a senior technical team
Proven experience architecting for low-latency, high-TPS, active-active, multi-region systems
Track record driving automation maturity, ideally including AI/ML-assisted operations or self-healing systems
Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or related field, or equivalent practical experience
Avalara is an AI-first Company
AI is embedded in our workflows, decision-making, and products. Success here requires embracing AI as an essential capability.
You’ll bring experience using AI and AI-related technologies, ready to thrive here.
You’ll apply AI every day to business challenges - improving efficiency, contributing solutions, and driving results for your team, our company, and our customers.
You’ll grow with AI by staying curious about new trends and best practices, and by sharing what you learn so others can benefit too.
How We'll Take Care of You
Total Rewards
In addition to a great compensation package, paid time off, and paid parental leave, many Avalara employees are eligible for bonuses.
Health & Wellness
Benefits vary by location but generally include private medical, life, and disability insurance.
Inclusive culture and diversity
Avalara strongly supports diversity, equity, and inclusion, and is committed to integrating them into our business practices and our organizational culture. We also have a total of 8 employee-run resource groups, each with senior leadership and exec sponsorship.
What You Need To Know About Avalara
We’re defining the relationship between tax and tech.
We’ve already built an industry-leading cloud compliance platform, processing over 54 billion customer API calls and over 6.6 million tax returns a year. Our growth is real - we're a billion dollar business - and we’re not slowing down until we’ve achieved our mission - to be part of every transaction in the world.
We’re bright, innovative, and disruptive, like the orange we love to wear. It captures our quirky spirit and optimistic mindset. It shows off the culture we’ve designed, that empowers our people to win. We’ve been different from day one. Join us, and your career will be too.
We’re An Equal Opportunity Employer
Supporting diversity and inclusion is a cornerstone of our company — we don’t want people to fit into our culture, but to enrich it. All qualified candidates will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, creed, religion, age, gender, national orientation, disability, sexual orientation, US Veteran status, or any other factor protected by law. If you require any reasonable adjustments during the recruitment process, please let us know.
