Database Platform Tech Lead

About the role

As Database Platform Tech Lead, you will set the direction, own the outcomes, and guide the team building the platform layer that makes database operations self-service, automated, and reliable at scale. Our database platform is foundational to how Trade Republic works — every trade, savings plan, and card payment touches it.

What you'll do

• Set the database reliability standard: Architect the failover mechanisms, replication topology, and recovery strategies that meet our availability targets — and own the engineering roadmap that closes the gap between where we are and the number of 9s the business requires.
• Drive toward zero-touch operations: Define what fully automated database operations look like — provisioning and scaling to zero-downtime migrations — and lead the platform work that gets us there.
• Own the database technology strategy: Define which database technology fits which problem — set the criteria for adoption, govern the portfolio, and ensure every database choice is intentional and operated with the same level of rigour.
• Define the database contract with product teams: Set the standards for how product engineers interact with databases — schema governance, migration patterns, connection pooling, query performance — and build the tooling that makes it effortless to get right.
• Own the platform end to end: Set the operational bar — define on-call practices and incident response standards for database failures, and hold the team to them.
• Own the direction and drive it forward: Define the long-term database platform strategy, drive cross-team initiatives from kickoff to delivery, and align database infrastructure decisions with broader engineering, compliance, and cost goals.

What you'll need

• 5+ years of experience in database engineering, platform engineering, or a related systems discipline, with a track record of technical leadership.
• Deep, hands-on PostgreSQL expertise: strong opinions on replication, sharding, backup strategies, upgrades, and security. Hands-on experience with Postgres automation and lifecycle tooling is required.
• Familiarity with ClickHouse and Cassandra/Scylla in production environments.
• Solid backend engineering background — Go is preferred but any strong language is welcome; familiarity with Kotlin/JVM is a plus as you'll work directly with product teams who rely on it.
• A track record of turning database best practices into opinionated standards that engineering teams actually adopt.
• Cloud-native in your DNA: hands-on with Kubernetes and IaC tooling, running production workloads on AWS or equivalent.
• Proven ability to define technical strategy, drive cross-team initiatives end-to-end, and hold yourself and others accountable to outcomes.
• Ability to contribute to architectural decisions and clearly communicate trade-offs to both engineers and leadership.