Senior Database DBA - MemSQL / SingleStore

Role Overview

We are seeking a Senior MemSQL / SingleStore Cluster Administrator to own and manage mission-critical, large-scale distributed database platforms. This role requires a pure Database Administrator (DBA) with deep expertise in handling petabyte-scale data, complex distributed clusters, and real-time latency-sensitive workloads.

Core Technical Expectations

Experience handling petabytes of data ingested every 15 minutes in large-scale environments.

Strong expertise managing large MemSQL / SingleStore clusters (multi-node, multi-TB to multi-PB).

Deep understanding of data distribution across aggregators and leaf nodes.

Expertise in

• Partitioning and shard key strategy
• Data skew mitigation
• Hot partition resolution
• Worker node and leaf node optimization

Strong table-level knowledge including

• Index strategy
• Thread management
• Connection pooling
• Memory limits
• Query plan optimization

Strong understanding of different MemSQL/SingleStore versions and corresponding architectural/feature changes.

Key Responsibilities

End-to-end ownership of large MemSQL/SingleStore clusters (design, build, upgrade, operate, decommission).

Architect and maintain High Availability (HA) and Disaster Recovery (DR) setups including

• Redundancy levels
• Availability groups
• Cross-region replication

Plan and execute

• Cluster expansion
• Downsizing
• Online partition rebalancing
• Leaf node management with minimal/no downtime

Proactively monitor cluster health, throughput, latency, and capacity; define and maintain SLAs.

Perform advanced performance tuning

• Schema design
• Shard key design
• Index strategy
• NUMA and memory tuning
• Workload management

Implement backup/restore strategies and regularly test DR & failover.

Lead incident response and perform deep root cause analysis.

Enforce database security best practices

• Authentication & authorization
• Encryption
• Auditing
• Network controls

Drive automation using scripting (Python/Bash) and Infrastructure as Code.

Maintain documentation, operational runbooks, and standards.

Evaluate new MemSQL/SingleStore features and lead version upgrades and migrations .

Required Experience & Skills

10+ years of total database engineering/administration experience.

4–5+ years of deep, production-grade experience administering MemSQL/SingleStore clusters at scale.

Strong hands-on experience with

• Aggregators & leaf nodes
• Licensing and memory limits
• Cluster expansion & partition rebalancing
• Replication & failover/failback
• Proven ability to diagnose:
• Locking issues
• Data skew
• Hot partitions
• Bad execution plans
• Strong Linux system tuning knowledge:
• CPU/NUMA affinity
• Disk & I/O optimization
• Networking
• ulimits & OS-level tuning
• Experience with monitoring & alerting tools:
• Prometheus / Grafana
• Datadog
• Splunk
• ELK
• Strong SQL expertise and scripting (Python/Bash).
• Experience in Cloud/Container environments (AWS/Azure/GCP, Kubernetes) is highly preferred.

Excellent communication skills with ability to lead production calls and explain technical trade-offs clearly.