Healthcare should work for patients, but it doesn’t. Zocdoc's mission is to give power to the patient by making it easy to find and book in-person or virtual care. The Staff Database Reliability Engineer will play a pivotal role in evolving Zocdoc's database architecture from a traditional administration model to a modern, cloud-native reliability platform.
Requirements
- 8+ years of experience building and operating production-grade data infrastructure
- Deep fluency in cloud-native databases (e.g., RDS, DynamoDB, Redshift, Aurora) and relational systems (e.g., SQL Server, PostgreSQL)
- Proven experience in designing high-throughput, low-latency, and fault-tolerant data architectures
- Strong hands-on experience with infrastructure-as-code (Terraform, CDK) and observability platforms (e.g., dashboards, SLOs, alerting)
- A track record of building tools and patterns that enable self-service and reduce operational overhead
- Experience designing and enforcing systems for schema evolution, regulatory compliance, and data governance
- Demonstrated ability to lead initiatives, mentor peers, and shape engineering direction across functions
Responsibilities
- Architect and evolve scalable, secure, and observable database systems across cloud-native (e.g., AWS RDS, DynamoDB, Aurora) and traditional relational platforms (e.g., SQL Server)
- Define and implement patterns for schema governance, data lineage, quality assurance, and access control across services and teams
- Lead modernization efforts by replacing legacy systems with infrastructure-as-code, automated provisioning, and scalable platform patterns
- Build reusable modules, tooling, and guardrails that help teams self-serve safely while meeting compliance, reliability, and cost-efficiency goals
- Lead the end-to-end detection and response for database incidents—taking rapid, decisive action to minimize risk to users, data integrity, and business operations.
- Drive post-incident analysis and systemic improvements to raise the bar for operational excellence in data systems
- Partner with developers, SREs, platform teams, and data engineers to align architecture and execution with business needs and reliability standards
Other
- Are a systems thinker who approaches data as a foundational service—not just a store
- Enjoy building patterns and platforms that allow others to succeed safely
- Have a strong point of view on data governance, quality, and lifecycle management
- Influence across organizations through strategy, clarity, and technical credibility
- Believe in enabling developers through tooling, automation, and well-designed defaults
