At Sprout Social we are building software that is made to last. Our 20,000+ customers depend on us daily to connect them with their customers, so reliability, scalability, and performance are top of mind. Our software is used by companies like Evernote, Grubhub, Subaru and Edelman to create stronger relationships with their customers through social media. Each day, our platform processes 10s of millions of social media messages and our APIs handle over 10 billion requests per year to deliver our software to customers in over 100 countries.

As a SaaS company, our data is our lifeblood. Members of the Database Reliability Engineering team are the stewards of this data and the systems that hold it. We are responsible for the reliability, resiliency and accessibility of our data layer. Additionally, we champion important initiatives to safeguard our customer's data and meet our GDPR/SOC2 compliance requirements. We do not operate as gatekeepers but instead partner with other teams to takeover operational concerns for the databases they use.

Leveraging your background in database operations, you'll advise engineers on performance and modeling best practices. To do this effectively, you'll need to prioritize collaboration and have an eye toward product focused decision making. In lieu of building systems for engineers, you'll instead build self-service solutions and partner with engineers to select the appropriate technology for their needs. Rather than monitoring and scaling systems in isolation, you'll put the appropriate key indicators in front of teams and advise them on how to scale their systems to meet customer and performance demands.

We are looking for a pragmatic database expert who highly values collaboration to help us build a world class database stack. If you are passionate about automation and desire to build a DevOps culture, we'd love to talk to you!

Within 1 month, you will:

• Complete Sprout’s New Hire training program alongside other new Sprout team members.
• Ship your first feature to production
• Begin to become acclimated with our core database technologies: MySQL, Cassandra, and Elasticsearch
• Shadow a team member for an on-call rotation

Within 3 months, you will:

• Join our on-call rotation (don’t worry we’ve got your back!)
• Help promote DevOps culture by working with engineers to assume operational ownership
• Build automation tools to make common database operations safe and predictable
• Consult with teams on their data layer choices and decisions
• Contribute to defining new best practices for our data layer
• Work with teammates to evaluate our existing issues and pain points, provide guidance on how to address
• Help reduce operational toil by automating away common issues

Within 6 months, you will:

• Work with engineering leadership to define Service Level Objectives for our primary datastores
• Organize and automate regular disaster recovery drills for our key systems
• Build visualization tools and dashboards that provide insights into database health
• Surface key database performance issues to the right teams
• Help implement best-in-class security practices for sensitive secrets with Vault, e.g. automated secrets rotation

Within 12 months, you will:

• Improve our backup and recovery automation
• Ensure our systems meet compliance standards for Authentication, Authorization and Audit.
• Identify risk areas in our critical systems and develop plans of action to mitigate those risks
• Build systems that remove DBRE as the roadblock to production for schema alterations on databases
• Perform regular database capacity audits to ensure we are making cost conscious decisions
• Have opportunities to contribute to in-house technical presentations and workshops that share your expertise with large groups of Sprout developers.
• Surprise us! Use your unique ideas and abilities to change your team in beneficial ways that we haven’t even considered yet.

Of course, what is outlined above is the ideal timeline, but things may shift based on business needs and other projects and tasks could be added at the discretion of your manager.

About Sprout Social
Sprout Social powers open communication between individuals, brands and communities through elegant, sophisticated software. We are relentless about solving hard problems for our customers and committed to both customer and team success.

Team Sprout is a group of very talented, smart and passionate people with broad interests and backgrounds. We believe that true employee engagement cannot happen if you can’t bring your whole self to work, so we’re committed to building a diverse team, embracing an inclusive culture and investing in equity across our organization. That dedication is core to Sprout. We want all candidates, particularly those coming from traditionally underrepresented groups in the technology industry, to know they are welcome at Sprout.

We’re proud to regularly be recognized for software, product and company culture achievements. Our team’s shared belief in Sprout’s mission promotes a culture of openness, empowerment and fun. We have built a benefits program to match the strength of our team. This program includes:

• Insurance and benefit options that are built for both individuals and families, including generous company contributions
• Progressive benefit programs, like our parental leave program and free Divvy bike memberships
• High-quality and well-maintained equipment - your computer will never prevent you from doing your best
• Beautiful, convenient and state-of-the-art offices in Chicago’s Loop
• Solid programs in some of the staples: transportation, disability and life insurance
• Wellness initiatives to ensure both health and financial well-being of our team
• Breakfast and lunch options onsite, and more healthy snack options and beverages than you can imagine
• Growing corporate social responsibility program that is driven by the involvement and passion of our team members