DigitalOcean · 2 months ago
Principal Engineer, Managed Database Services
United States
Full-time
Remote
Lead/Staff
$248K/yr - $372K/yr
12+ years expDigitalOcean is a cutting-edge technology company that simplifies cloud and AI for builders. As a Principal Engineer, you will lead the design and development of scalable database platforms, ensuring high availability and performance while collaborating with cross-functional teams to align technical roadmaps with strategic objectives.
Cloud ComputingDevOpsSaaSVirtualizationWeb Hosting
Responsibilities
Architect and Build
Design and evolve the architecture of large-scale distributed database systems optimized for scalability, reliability, low-latency, and cost efficiency
Architect solutions for storage engines, indexing, querying, caching, replication, and high availability, drawing from best practices in both relational and NoSQL paradigms
Roll out new services by taking on a hands-on lead role as required to ensure timely delivery
Technical Leadership
Establish and enforce technical standards, coding practices, tooling, and infrastructure guidelines across the database engineering teams
Mentor other senior engineers, shaping the team’s culture of architectural rigor and operational excellence
Cross-functional Collaboration
Work with product managers, stakeholders, and business leaders to translate strategic objectives into scalable technical roadmaps
Guide customer-facing teams (e.g., consultants, support, sales engineers) to define database solutions and migration strategies aligned with organizational goals
Reliability, Performance & Scaling
Lead Operations Excellence for database services, establish mechanisms and processes that scale to the engineering organization while raising the bar
Oversee availability, performance tuning, failover strategies, capacity planning, and disaster recovery for database platforms
Drive automation (e.g., IaC, CI/CD pipelines, deployments, monitoring) to optimize operations
Innovation & Future Roadmapping
Research and integrate advanced capabilities (e.g., AI‑assisted tooling, MCP protocols) to enhance developer workflows and metadata accessibility across database types
Qualification
Required
≥ 12–15 years in distributed systems architecture, database internals (storage, indexing, query optimizers), and cloud infrastructure
Hands-on experience designing and operating production-grade systems on one or more database services in the Cloud
Prior experience as a technical visionary in large-scale, mission-critical projects; ability to align technology strategy with business impact
Familiarity with infrastructure as code, deployment pipelines, and observability frameworks
Strong written and verbal communication skills with a track record of mentoring senior and junior engineers; translating complex concepts across engineering and business teams
Benefits
Reimbursement for relevant conferences, training, and education
Access to LinkedIn Learning's 10,000+ courses
Employee Assistance Program
Local Employee Meetups
Flexible time off policy
Bonus in addition to base salary
Equity compensation to eligible employees
Equity grants upon hire
Option to participate in our Employee Stock Purchase Program
Company
DigitalOcean
DigitalOcean provides a cloud platform to deploy, manage, and scale applications of any size.
1001-5000 employees
H1B Sponsorship
DigitalOcean has a track record of offering H1B sponsorships. Please note that this does not
guarantee sponsorship for this specific role. Below presents additional info for your
reference. (Data Powered by US Department of Labor)
Distribution of Different Job Fields Receiving Sponsorship
Represents job field similar to this job
Trends of Total Sponsorships
2025 (30)
2024 (8)
2023 (9)
2022 (22)
2021 (11)
2020 (2)
Funding
Current Stage
Public CompanyTotal Funding
$1.92BKey Investors
Global Secure InvestAccess IndustriesKeyBanc Capital Markets
2025-08-12Post Ipo Debt· $625M
2025-05-05Post Ipo Debt· $800M
2021-09-13Post Ipo Equity· $34.91M
Leadership Team
Paddy Srinivasan
Chief Executive Officer
Larry D'Angelo
Chief Revenue Officer
Recent News
2026-01-03
2025-12-17
2025-12-16
Company data provided by crunchbase