Database Infrastructure Engineer (IT-DA-DB-2026-174-LD)

At CERN , the European Organization for Nuclear Research, physicists and engineers are probing the fundamental structure of the universe. Using the world's largest and most complex scientific instruments, they study the basic constituents of matter - fundamental particles that are made to collide together at close to the speed of light. The process gives physicists clues about how particles interact, and provides insights into the fundamental laws of nature.

Introduction

You will play an active role in the support and evolution of the database systems that underpin the LHC experiments, accelerator operations, and CERN's support services. In addition to general database administration, you will focus on the engineering, operation, and modernisation of orchestrated High Availability (HA) infrastructures. A key responsibility will be the development and operation of a resilient, distributed PostgreSQL HA platform based on modern consensus, orchestration, and proxy routing technologies.

A hands-on engineering role focused on the reliability, automation and evolution of CERN’s PostgreSQL and relational database platforms, with a particular focus on high availability, resilience and service continuity for mission-critical scientific and organisational services.

Functions

As a Database Infrastructure Engineer in the Databases and Analytics Group, your main activities will consist of:

- Administration, operation, and evolution of MySQL, and PostgreSQL database platforms, including troubleshooting, configuration, migrations, upgrades, scaling, and patching.
- Design, deployment, operation, and continuous improvement of highly available and resilient PostgreSQL infrastructures.
- Development and maintenance of automation for database provisioning, configuration, failover and operational workflows.
- Proactive monitoring of database environments to ensure optimum performance, throughput, stability, availability and security.
- Definition and evolution of database architecture, resilience, disaster recovery, and service continuity strategies.
- Provision of technical expertise and troubleshooting support to application development teams.
- Share domain and technical expertise, and provide technical mentorship and training to peers.

Behavioural competencies

- Solving Problems: identifying, defining and assessing problems, taking action to address them.
- Achieving Results: delivering high quality work on time and fulfilling expectations.
- Working in Teams: building and maintaining constructive and effective work relationships.
- Communicating Effectively: delivering presentations in a structured and clear way; adjusting style and content to the audience; responding calmly and confidently to questions.
- Learning and Sharing Knowledge: keeping up-to-date with developments in own field of expertise and readily absorbing new information.

Language skills

- Spoken and written English, with a commitment to learn French.

Requirements

Master's Degree or equivalent relevant experience in the field of Computing Science, or a science discipline (e.g., Physics) with significant computing content, or a related field.; Demonstrated experience operating production relational database services, preferably PostgreSQL, in environments where reliability, availability, backup, recovery and service continuity are critical.; Strong troubleshooting skills in database operations, including performance analysis, query optimisation, replication, clustering, partitioning, upgrades and incident resolution.; Solid understanding of high-availability and disaster-recovery concepts for relational databases, practical experience with PostgreSQL HA tooling such as Patroni, Consul, HAProxy or PgBouncer would be a strong asset.; Technical and troubleshooting skills with open-source database clustering and automated failover tools, with experience in Patroni and Consul being a strong asset.; Solid SQL knowledge with the ability to write and troubleshoot stored procedures, functions, tables, indexes, and constraints, and to support application teams in diagnosing database-related issues.; Experience with infrastructure components including load balancers/proxies (e.g., HAProxy), connection managers (e.g., PgBouncer), Linux-based systems, and infrastructure tools like Puppet or Kubernetes is an asset.; Ability to work collaboratively with infrastructure and application teams, document operational procedures, share knowledge and contribute to the continuous improvement of database services.; Administration of databases: experience with production relational database services, including PostgreSQL and MySQL administration. Experience designing, deploying and operating highly available architectures (familiarity with PostgreSQL clustering solutions such as Patroni and replica management is considered an advantage).; Knowledge of operating systems: such as Linux, including familiarity with network port allocation, security configurations, and enterprise storage architectures.; Knowledge of programming techniques and languages: ability to develop and maintain SQL, shell scripts or Python automation to support database operations, monitoring, deployment and troubleshooting.; Architecture and design of ICT systems: ability to design resilient, distributed infrastructure components supporting high availability, failover, traffic routing and service continuity.

Benefits

A competitive salary (tax free), increasing in line with your years of relevant experience.; 30 days of paid leave per year plus 2 weeks annual closure.; Coverage by CERN’s comprehensive health insurance scheme (for yourself, your spouse and children), and membership of the CERN Pension Fund.; Family, child and infant monthly allowances depending on your individual circumstances.; A relocation package (installation grant, removal, travel expenses) depending on your individual circumstances.; Possibility to extend your contract up to 8 years + eligibility for indefinite contract tenure.