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Senior Database Administrator

Fam

About Fam (previously FamPay)

Fam is India’s first payments app for everyone above 11. FamApp helps make online and offline payments through UPI and FamCard. We are on a mission to raise a new, financially aware generation, and drive 250 million+ young users in India to kickstart their financial journey super early in their life.

We’re reimagining how the next generation experiences fintech—going beyond payments to build a lifestyle brand that blends money, identity, and everyday experiences into one seamless, intuitive journey.

Founded in 2019 by IIT Roorkee alumni, Fam is backed by some of the most respected investors around the world like Elevation Capital, Y-Combinator, Peak XV (Sequoia Capital) India, Venture Highway, Global Founder’s Capital and the likes of Kunal Shah, Amrish Rao as angel investors.

Responsibilities

  • Own availability SLOs for production databases. Lead incident response and RCAs for DB-related outages, and drive fixes to closure.
  • Participate in the 24x7 database on-call rotation, including off-hours and weekend cover. Act as the escalation point for DB incidents raised by SRE and engineering teams, keep runbooks and alert thresholds current, and cut alert noise so pages are actionable.
  • Profile production workloads (slow query logs,
  • , Performance Schema, DynamoDB/Cassandra metrics) and act on them: indexing, query rewrites, partitioning, connection pooling, read replicas, sharding, capacity changes.
  • Separate OLTP and analytical access patterns, push back on schemas or queries that will not scale, and make evidence-backed calls on engine choice, instance class and topology.
  • Design and test backup, PITR, cross-AZ and cross-region replication. Plan and execute
  • periodic DR drills
  • Manage S3 buckets used for backups, archives and the lakehouse. Analyse access patterns and set lifecycle, tiering and retention policies.

Operate and tune MPP engines such as

  • Own version upgrades, patching, parameter changes and certificate rotation with zero or planned-minimal downtime.
  • Prepare database infrastructure for new product rollouts: capacity plans, load tests, migration runbooks, rollback paths.
  • Work with backend, data, SRE, security and non-technical stakeholders (compliance, finance, product) and translate DB risk into decisions they can act on.

Requirements

  • 5-8 years
  • in database administration or database reliability engineering, with at least 3 years on
  • high-traffic, customer-facing production systems
  • Deep production expertise in PostgreSQL or PostgresSQL Based, including replication internals, vacuum/InnoDB tuning, and upgrades on both self-managed and
  • RDS/Aurora

Preferred

  • (operators such as CloudNativePG, Percona, K8ssandra).
  • , especially UPI or card systems.

About this Role

We are looking for a

Senior DBA with

5-8 years of experience running mission-critical databases across relational , NoSQL, key-value and analytical engines, in both on-premise and managed cloud (AWS) setups. You will own uptime, performance, scaling, DR and audit readiness for the data stores behind a regulated UPI/fintech platform serving millions of users. The role sits between Engineering, Data, Security and Compliance: you decide how our databases are designed, run, recovered and paid for.

On the Job

Performance & Scaling

pg_stat_statements

DR & Multi-Zone Replication

with documented RTO/RPO results.

Audit & Compliance

Own database controls for

RBI, NPCI, ISO 27001, PCI DSS and third-party audits: access reviews, encryption at rest and in transit, audit logging, data retention, data localisation evidence. Be the point person for auditor walkthroughs.

Cost Optimisation

Right-size instances, reserved capacity and storage tiers; tune DynamoDB capacity modes; retire unused replicas and snapshots. Report spend against usage.

CDC Operations

Operate and tune CDC pipelines (

Debezium, Kafka Connect, AWS DMS): replication slots, binlog/WAL retention, schema changes, lag and replay.

Distributed Query Engines

Trino, StarBurst, StarRocks, BigQuery: cluster sizing, resource groups, caching, query governance.

Design Standards

Define and enforce standards for schema design, naming, indexing, migrations, access roles and PII handling. Review schema changes before they reach production.

Production experience with at least two of

DynamoDB, Cassandra, MongoDB, Redis.

Proven record of

DR drills, multi-AZ/multi-region replication and restoring from backup under pressure.

Direct involvement in regulatory or third-party audits

  • (RBI, ISO 27001, PCI DSS, SOC 2 or equivalent), including producing evidence and closing findings.
  • Hands-on database cost optimisation with measurable savings.
  • Strong

SQL

  • , query plan analysis and scripting in
  • Python or Bash for automation.

Experience with

infrastructure as code

  • (Terraform or CloudFormation) and monitoring stacks (Prometheus, Grafana, CloudWatch, Datadog or similar).
  • Solid understanding of database security: IAM and role design, encryption, secrets management, audit logging.

Willingness to be part of a

24x7 on-call rotation, with prior experience handling production DB incidents off-hours.

Good to Haves

Operating

Debezium / Kafka Connect

CDC in production.

Running

  • Trino,Starburst, StarRocks or BigQuery clusters at scale.
  • S3 lifecycle and storage tiering design for backups and data lakes.
  • Databases on
  • Kubernetes

Experience in

  • fintech, payments or banking
  • Familiarity with

Apache Iceberg

  • / DeltaLake or Lakehouse table formats.
  • Analysing slow queries generated by BI tools such as
  • Superset, Metabase or Power BI, tracing slow dashboard rendering back to query patterns, missing indexes or unsuitable data models, and fixing them at the source or through aggregates and caching.

Taking part in

  • CI/CD for database changes: migration tooling (Flyway, Liquibase, Alembic or similar), automated schema linting and review gates that enforce design standards before changes reach production.
  • Certifications: AWS Database Specialty, PostgreSQL, MongoDB or Cassandra.

Perks That Go Beyond the Paycheck

  • Relocation assistance to make your move seamless.
  • Free office meals (lunch & dinner).
  • Generous leave policy, including birthday leave, period leave, paternity and maternity support, and more.
  • Salary advance and loan policies for any financial help.
  • Quarterly rewards and recognition programs, and a referral program with great incentives.
  • Access the latest gadgets and tools.
  • Comprehensive health insurance for you and your family, mental health support.
  • Tax benefits with options like food coupons, phone allowances, car/device leasing.
  • Retirement perks like PF contribution, leave encashment and gratuity.

Here’s all the tea on FamApp ☕️

FamApp focuses on financial inclusion of the next generation by providing UPI & card payments to everyone above 11 years old. Our flagship Spending Account, FamX, seamlessly integrates UPI and card payments, enabling users to manage, save, and learn about their finances effortlessly.

Revolutionizing Payments and FinTech

FamApp has enabled 10 million+ users to make UPI and card payments across India, removing the inconvenience of carrying cash everywhere. Users get to customise their FamX card with doodles, which lets them add a personal touch to their payments.

Trusted by leading investors

We’re proud to be supported by renowned investors like Elevation Capital, Y-Combinator, Peak XV (formerly Sequoia Capital India), Venture Highway, Global Founder’s Capital, and esteemed angels Kunal Shah and Amrish Rao.

Join Our Dynamic Team

At Fam, our people-first approach is reflected in our generous leave policies, flexible work schedules, comprehensive health benefits, and free mental health sessions. We don’t mean to brag, but we promise you’ll be surrounded by some of the most fun, talented and passionate people in the startup space.

Want to see what makes life at Fam so awesome? Check out our shenanigans at @lifeatfam 😛

PS - We’re looking for someone with an AI-native mindset, who actively leverages AI in their day-to-day work, as we encourage and embed it across every level at Fam.