Data Engineer

• As a Database Engineer on the Professional Archive team, you’ll operate as a subject-matter expert for the data infrastructure that powers our platform – driving the architecture, scaling, and reliability decisions that keep high-velocity, compliance-critical systems performant and secure
• You’ll work with SQL Server environments spanning multi-terabyte data volumes, tables with billions of rows, and sustained throughput exceeding 100,000 transactions per second
• You’ll work independently through ambiguous and unfamiliar problems, set technical direction for real-time data pipelines and system performance, and act as a go-to resource for engineers across the wider organization
• Your work will directly shape how Smarsh clients meet their compliance needs through scalable, dependable data and search capabilities
• You’ll partner with leaders across Product Management, Engineering, and Site Reliability, weighing a range of inputs to resolve complex challenges and influence strategy beyond your immediate team
• Serve as a subject-matter expert for database architecture and performance, guiding engineers through complex or ambiguous technical problems where established principles don’t fully apply
• Set the technical approach for scalable data solutions, partnering with stakeholders across Product, Engineering, and Site Reliability to shape direction rather than simply implement it
• Drive larger, cross-functional projects from design through delivery, proactively identifying and addressing upstream and downstream impacts before they become issues
• Informally mentor other engineers, modeling sound engineering discipline and raising the technical bar for the wider team
• Shape how the team adopts modern engineering practices, including Agile methodologies, CI/CD pipelines, and DevOps principles
• Review code and database changes with an eye for systemic risk and performance, while also leading efforts to pay down technical debt across systems
• Track emerging technologies and make the call on which are worth adopting, guiding the team’s direction
• Interpret database health and performance data (Splunk, Datadog, Grafana) to proactively flag and address risk before it surfaces as an incident

Benefits

• Personal time off: A healthy work-life balance is critical to your success at the office. Smarsh offers a “take-what-you-need” time off policy as well as flexible work arrangements
• Life and disability insurance: Fully paid life and disability insurance coverage is provided from the day you start your job
• Wellness program: You’re happier when you’re healthier. So we reimburse a portion of employees’ monthly health club expenses
• Retirement savings: We match a percentage of your retirement savings contributions. Smarsh employer match invests immediately, so it’s yours from day one
• Giving back: Through our community partnership program, Full Circle, employees make a positive difference and receive paid time off for Full Circle activities so they can support the organizations that matter most to them
• Employee assistance program: We offer free and confidential assessments, short-term counseling, referrals and follow-up services to employees for personal or work-related issues to support their mental and emotional well-being
• Parental leave: We want to support our colleagues who are starting a family. Smarsh offers paid leave to help you welcome your new bundle(s) of joy into the world
• Sabbatical: The Smarsh sabbatical program provides a time to recharge, study or simply a time to do something you are passionate about away from the workplace. Employees are eligible after six years of service
• Getting here and home: Biking and taking public transit to work is not only cool but a smart and green thing to do. Smarsh proudly reimburses for monthly transit costs and biking expenses
• Recognition: We’re big on kudos for a job well done. Our employee recognition program enables co-workers to nominate their peers who best embody our core values for recognition
• Healthcare insurance: We provide medical, dental and vision insurance and a flexible spending account that allows you to set aside pre-tax dollars to pay for eligible out-of-pocket expenses
• Cellphones: To support our mobile and geographically dispersed workforce, we offer corporate cellular plan discounts with both AT&T and T-Mobile

• We’re looking for someone who brings deep technical judgment, mentors others, and is motivated to make an impact through thoughtful, high-leverage engineering
• A demonstrated ability to set database performance strategy by tuning queries and indexes and establishing standards that others follow
• Strong command of data security practices (encryption, access controls, auditing), with the ability to shape how the team approaches them
• We’re looking for a recognized subject-matter expert who operates independently, drives clarity through ambiguity, and raises the bar for those around them
• Deep expertise designing logical and physical data models, including schema design and data relationships, at a level others rely on for direction
• Ability to communicate technical direction, trade-offs, and risk clearly to stakeholders outside your immediate team
• Ability to plan for data growth and scale infrastructure with the full flow of work in mind, not just the immediate ask
• The credibility and collaborative instinct to influence peers and cross-functional partners, not just execute their requests
• Advanced, wide-ranging experience with database systems, with the judgment to operate independently in unfamiliar or ambiguous situations
• Strong command of modern development practices and Agile methodologies, with a voice in how the team applies them
• A track record of independently troubleshooting complex issues in systems that require high availability, serving as an escalation point for others
• A proactive approach to identifying and solving problems that cross team boundaries
• Comfort setting a course through evolving, ambiguous requirements rather than waiting for them to be resolved
• If you don’t meet every qualification listed below, we still encourage you to apply. We value diverse experiences and perspectives. Progression to this level reflects demonstrated ability to perform as a subject-matter expert, not years of experience alone
• 7+ years of hands-on experience with Microsoft SQL Server in a production environment, with demonstrated impact as a subject-matter expert
• Deep expertise in schema and data model design, including normalization, partitioning, and indexing strategy for both OLTP workloads
• Advanced proficiency in performance tuning, including T-SQL and stored procedure optimization, execution plan analysis, and query tuning at scale
• Proven, hands-on experience managing and troubleshooting SQL Server databases at terabyte scale, including tables with billions of rows, and sustained throughput exceeding 100k transactions per second
• Demonstrated ability to diagnose and resolve production capacity and contention issues at this scale, including lock/latch contention, TempDB performance, and transaction management
• Experience designing for horizontal as well as vertical scalability, anticipating data growth before it becomes a production risk
• Familiarity with NoSQL technologies (e.g., MongoDB, Cassandra, DynamoDB) is a plus
• Experience with cloud database platforms (e.g., AWS RDS/Aurora, MongoDB Atlas) is a plus