Staff Database Reliability Engineer – PostgreSQL

Location: Remote OR Hybrid from Amsterdam ABOUT STREAM Stream powers real-time Chat https://getstream.io/chat/, Video https://getstream.io/video/, Activity Feeds https://getstream.io/activity-feeds/, and AI Moderation https://getstream.io/moderation/ for billions of end-users across thousands of apps — from Strava and Bumble to eBay and Patreon. Our platform processes billions of API requests per month and supports applications with millions of concurrent users, while delivering highly reliable, low-latency services and a great developer experience. The Role We're looking for a hands-on Database Engineer to own PostgreSQL as a production system at Stream. You'll work directly with a small, senior team and be responsible for the performance, reliability, and operability of the databases that store and serve data for Stream's entire real-time platform. This is a deep, hands-on engineering role. You'll spend your time in query plans, storage internals, and the operational realities of running databases under heavy, continuous load — not administering them from a distance. Why This Role Exists We have 35-40 different DBs (largest one is 15tb), with large writing throughput. To save hosting costs, we plan on migrating from AWS RDS to self-hosted Postgres on Kubernetes. For that, we need help from someone who: What You'll Work On - Performance and internals — diagnose and resolve performance issues from the query down to the storage engine: indexing strategy, query planning, vacuum and bloat management, and tuning under sustained write load. - Reliability and operations — own the operational characteristics of our Postgres fleet, including backup, replication, and high availability as we take on more responsibility for running these systems ourselves. - Scaling the data layer — work on sharding, partitioning, and the architectural decisions that keep the database performant as data and traffic grow. Beyond that, you'll set standards for how we run Postgres, collaborate cl