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Sr. Database Administrator

Nylas

Nylas

IT
Canada · Remote
Posted on Thursday, July 27, 2023
Who we are
Our mission at Nylas is to turn communication into inspiration and insight. We empower over 100,000 developers and over 900 companies all over the world to access, parse, and gain insights from communications data to provide better experiences for their customers and users, all while providing top tier security and compliance. To achieve this vision, we’ve raised over $175M from Tiger Global, 8VC, ScaleUp, Spark Capital, Slack, and more.
We have a huge market (every company that builds software) and a massive opportunity (the world runs on communication and data). By continuing to hire exceptional people from all different backgrounds and perspectives, we have the opportunity to make Nylas one of the biggest, most successful and equitable technology companies in the world.
Why Nylas
Nylas is an advocate for the well-being of our employees. We trust our employees and give them the autonomy to achieve their goals without focusing on when, where, and how they get there. We are a flexibility first workplace, but if Nylanauts want to work from an office, we have hubs in San Francisco, Denver, New York City, Toronto, and London.
We are also strong supporters of internal and cross-team mobility and growth. We want Nylas to be a place where anyone can be supported to grow, learn, and become the best at what they do. We’ve been named a top Startup for career growth and development by Forbes, Great Places to Work, and Comparably!
From our CTO + Co-Founder, Christine Spang:
“We have a number of folks on the team who started as an individual contributor and became staff level or leaders in their area. I personally love seeing people reach their full potential and become successful at Nylas.”

About the role

Nylas is currently operating at extreme scale with sharded MySQL clusters fronted by ProxySQL and managed with Terraform and Ansible. You will be responsible for the administration, scaling and maintenance of these MySQL clusters. You will also pair with our AI/ML team on getting the data they need to train new models. Looking toward the future, you will facilitate the migration to newer database technologies on the next generation of our infrastructure.

What You'll Do:

  • Maintain, scale, and administer our large sharded MySQL database environment to be operational 24/7 (more than 300TB of DB storage, 71 primary-replica pairs, hosting 300+ shards!)
  • Help facilitate migration to newer database technologies
  • Ensure our clusters are healthy, scaling, performant, and cost-effective
  • Enforce security and auditing practices to maintain DB integrity
  • Help teach and encourage smart database practices
  • Improve automation of our various database systems to help enable self-service (when it makes sense), and implement self-healing and resiliency
  • Improve automated backup and restore systems
  • Improve alerting - if it isn’t actionable, it’s not an alert! If something goes wrong and we don’t get alerted, we need a new alert!
  • Experiment and recommend new database engine upgrades and entirely new data stores (when they make sense)
  • Document current DB processes/architecture to help plan for the future

What You'll Bring

  • Strong proficiency in MySQL database management including
    • Performance tuning, query optimization, index tuning
    • Maintaining HA solutions using mha, orchestrator
    • Setting up monitoring dashboards with meaningful metrics to help identify usage/performance trends
  • You have worked with large sharded database technologies
  • Proficient understanding of code versioning tools such as Git (Version Control)
  • Familiarity with resource management in GCP/AWS/Azure
  • Knowledge of MySQL features, limitations, and underlying storage engines
  • Familiarity with other SQL/NoSQL databases such as PostgreSQL, MongoDB, Cassandra, Vitess
  • Understanding of developer technologies - Python, Ansible, AWS, Terraform
  • Nice-to-have - ProxySQL experience
Perks and Benefits:
  • Nylas Alumni Fund: after 3 years employment, Nylas will invest $20k into your seed round if you decide to start your own company
  • Healthcare: 90% premium coverage for medical, dental and vision for you and your family
  • Unlimited Paid Time Off (PTO): we take this very seriously as we care about the well-being of our employees
  • RRSP with 3% employer contribution
  • Education Stipend: $1,250 CAD annual education & development benefit
  • Cell Phone: $60 CAD per month stipend towards cell phone reimbursement
  • Fully Paid Parental Leave: 12 weeks parental leave (maternity & paternity)

Compensation:

The estimated base pay range for this role is 116000 CAD - 145000 CAD + equity, perks, and benefits.
The total compensation for this role will be determined based on permissible, non-discriminatory factors such as skills, experience, and geographic location

Not sure if this is you?
We want a diverse, global team, with a broad range of experience and perspectives. If this job sounds great, but you’re not sure if you qualify, apply anyway! We carefully consider every application and will either move forward with your application, find another team that might be better suited to your skills, keep in touch for future opportunities, or thank you for your time.