Manchester Digital
Database Reliability Engineer
How your CV stacks up
Upload your CV to see how well it fits this job role
?%
Database Reliability Engineer
Head of Database & Fintech Infrastructure
(Hiring Manager: David Betz, Chief Operating Officer)
Starling Bank is the UK’s first and leading digital bank, on a mission to fix banking. Our vision combines fast technology, fair service, and honest values—all at the tap of a phone, 24/7.
We envision technology that enables customers to save, spend, and manage money more intuitively. As a fully licensed UK bank merging the agility of a disruptive tech company with the credibility of financial regulations, we foster a culture of collaboration, disruptive innovation, and warmth—stretching across our London, Southampton, Cardiff, and Manchester offices.
Our Data technology teams lie at the heart of Starling, embodying our ethos: be self-driven, embrace full ownership, and drive results through our core values:
- Listen
- Keep it Simple
- Do the Right Thing
- Own It
- Aim for Greatness
Key Responsibilities
Infrastructure Modernisation & Scaling
- Optimise & Secure the Database Fleet: Lead architectural initiatives ensuring PostgreSQL reliability, scalability, and resilience across hundreds of instances via automated, real-time rollouts, and intelligent optimisation to minimise impacts.
- Future-Proof & Modernize: Champion a Kubernetes-native database strategy using tools like CloudNativePG (CNPG), ensuring smooth deployments across AWS and Google Cloud.
Cross-Cloud Consistency & Mobility
-Enable provider-agnostic deployments without rearchitecting—leveraging cloud-native best practices and frameworks for multi-version compatibility, geo-replication, and zero-downtime migrations.
Industry-Leading Observability & Monitoring
- Build proactive monitoring & alerting with tools like Prometheus, Grafana, OpenTelemetry, Humio to deliver:
- Real-time health diagnostics
- Performance regression detection
- Autoscale-based thresholds
Data Continuity, Resilience & Recovery
- Design automated Disaster Recovery & BCP frameworks using Terraform and custom APIs to guarantee:
- Global data durability
- Very high availability (99.99%+) guarantees
- Rapid recovery following regional failures
Team & Culture Leadership
- guidance supportive team peer-network culture
- Build open standards for data orchestration in a manner aligned with engineering best practices.
Demands Required
Technical Expertise
Give justification for each quality:
- ✨ PostgreSQL & Kubernetes Pro: Deep knowledge of managing PostgreSQL statefully on Kubernetes, including automated provisioning, scalability optimisations, and vendor agnosticism.
- 🔧 Systems-First Thinker: Obsession with automation—zero feature or operational task pitched as excessive manual effort. Terraform as standard, outputs delivered via FP/Groovy, multi-cloud “write once, run anywhere.”
- 🌍 Multi-Faceted Architect: Passionate about managing multi-tenant, multi-region and cross-cloud environments with unwavering data integrity and consistency.
- 🛡 Secure-by-Design: Treat security as non-negotiable. Ensures infrastructure follows automated policies leveraging gatekeeping, container breakdowns, fault isolation, testing processes that ensure
Overall Org-level:
- Prometheus for workflows
- Grafana for dashboards
- 💻 Productiongrade Software Craft: Core delivery via code —write production-grade application services in Java. Deliver prescriptive, testable, and re-usable code with robust relational designs.
Reasons to use Rodeo
Start with a chat, not a search bar
Grad scheme, placement, apprenticeship? Not sure what you want yet — that's fine. Your agent talks it through with you and turns "I have no idea" into a shortlist.
It searches the market for you
Every day your agent scans the market matching roles against what actually matters to you, not just keywords on a CV.
Only hits
No noise. No "maybe this fits." Just roles with a clear explanation of why they're right — and where to focus when applying.
Attitude & Qualities
- Customer obsession: Observes common patterns, remediation precedence, emphasizing APIs, and avoids manual fixes.
- Collaborative ownership: Thrives in environment driving, fluid problems-solving cross-teams to consistently champion impactful business-driven solutions.
Team Structure
Our Data domain is organised into teams that champion solutions on different aspects:
- Financial Crime & Identity Services
- Data & Machine Learning Engineering
- Core Banking – serving internal and customer-facing outputs
Evaluation & Interview Process
Interviews at Starling are two-way conversations—centered around candidate chemistry and the modern digital banks we aspire to be.
We propose the following degrees of interaction:
- (30 mins) – Informal chat with a peer (3rd party to HR)
- Take-home challenge (resources shared ahead of time)
- Technical Deep-dive (60 mins) with the two senior engineers leading the area
- Hiring Panel (reflecting broader stakeholder perspectives as part of rigorous homologation).
Workplace Culture
Hybrid Options: Starling follows a hybridjo-code approach: commutable from one location while working on-site minimum 1 workday/week recommended to enable fluid information sharing.
Diversity & Inclusion Stance: Starling is дион viable independent employer and takes shared commitment ensuring:
- Parents or guardians blind recruitment process review
- Dual focus on mental double non-discrimination and equal opportunity comfort
- Extended leave policies including paid volunteering time
Benefits
Get help with your application
Your very own career expert that helps elevate your application to the next level.
A selection that truly exemplifies the Starling ethos of valuing:
- Pace: 26 days holiday + service-based reductions gifts beyond the official “holiday parade”
- Family-friendly: Nurture “attended, expanded roles” for supporting life stages (beneficiaries recognising grant-driven performance rewards zones such as av):
- Life insurance of 4x your salary.
- Parental, sick leave, adoption support plans.
- Gym partnerships including increased-salary salary sacrifice offering a £5,000 one-time contribution benefit after .
- WELLBEING pri diaries of different types like Waitrose discount provibly 16 hours paid volunteering, cycle to work discounts.
- Local providers with discounts (e.g., Peloton, Waitrose) as a member benefit.
- Peer recognition: Perkbox offering (insurance broker support).
- Velorance: Electric vehicle lease programmes running throug interesting holistic domestic pourage trajectories allowing costaining global players.
Commitment Benefits Compare
| Benefits | Value |
|---|---|
| Holiday (inc. public holidays) | 26+ days with the ability to accumulate extra days via service or buy/sell. |
| Birthday holiday | An additional day off |
| Private Medical | Comprehensive healthcare premium via Vitality Health |
| Voluntary Benefits | Life insurance up to 4× salary + group income protection |
| Basic Benefits | Flexible working, robust retirement pensions |
| Leadership & Mentorship | Aim-for-growth approved recognition (eg Patents, Equity plans stipend via DNF) |
- Strong Real life childcare рядом inter—rec
So when you see this role fit comfortably boldly, note we are also committed as people culture:
- We encourage innovative collaborators regardless of whether you manifest that ability only readily. Applications overlooked here is less about traditional titles than your broader impact story.
- Starling prioritises scaling innovation not rote compliance—to come through with popular peer processes.
“It took my CV and asked me questions relevant to understanding what kind of jobs to suggest for me. Suggestions were almost perfect. Jobs were exactly what I’ve been looking for.”
Jessica, London
Skills