THE ROLE & THE TEAM
We're the team behind PostgreSQL as a Service — Zalando's internal database platform powering hundreds of engineering teams across Europe. Our mission is straightforward: make the usage of databases fun and transparent in the best possible way. Self-service provisioning, rock-solid reliability, sensible defaults, and zero toil for the engineers who just want to ship products.
We sit within Cloud Infrastructure and operate at a scale most engineers never get close to: hundreds of PostgreSQL clusters, thousands of databases, millions of daily transactions, and a platform that teams across Zalando depend on to build transformative products. We don't just operate infrastructure — we build the software that makes it run itself.
The team has a proven open-source track record in the PostgreSQL ecosystem. If you've run Postgres on Kubernetes, there's a good chance you've already used something we built.
As a Software Engineer on this team, you will be part of a group of engineers with deep PostgreSQL expertise, working on designing and building the platform infrastructure that enables 300+ teams across Zalando to run their databases with confidence — from the engineers shipping features daily to the stakeholders who just need their queries to work.
INCLUSIVE BY DESIGN
If you think you have what it takes, we encourage you to apply even if you don't meet every single requirement. You may just be the right candidate for this or other roles!
At Zalando, our vision is to be the leading pan-European ecosystem for fashion and lifestyle e-commerce – one that thrives on diversity and is truly inclusive by design. We believe that diverse teams fuel innovation and creativity, and we actively seek out talent from all backgrounds.
We actively seek to reduce bias in our hiring and employment processes, focusing on your qualifications, skills, and contributions. To support this, we kindly ask that you refrain from including personal details such as your photo, age, or marital status in your CV, ensuring a fair and equitable evaluation based solely on your abilities and potential.
We are committed to providing an exceptional and accessible candidate experience for everyone. If you require any accommodations to support you throughout the hiring process, please let us know – we are here to assist you.
Discover more about our commitment to creating a diverse and inclusive workplace: https://jobs.zalando.com/en/our-culture/diversity-and-inclusion
WHAT WE'D LOVE YOU TO DO (AND LOVE DOING)
Build and operate the automation layer that keeps hundreds of PostgreSQL clusters healthy — cluster provisioning, failover handling, self-healing, and lifecycle management on Kubernetes
Develop the self-service interfaces — APIs, CLIs, internal tooling — that let Zalando engineers spin up production-grade databases without filing a ticket or waiting for a human
Own observability end-to-end: define and track SLOs, build alerting that's actually actionable, and contribute to game days that sharpen our incident response
Identify and eliminate cost waste: build dashboards that surface underutilized instances, optimize resource allocation, and translate infrastructure spend into clear engineering decisions
Define and enforce database design standards — automate guardrails that prevent known anti-patterns before they reach production
Contribute upstream: actively publish and maintain open-source tooling as part of the job
Act as a database platform expert for teams across Zalando — consulting on schema design, performance tuning, and query optimization for engineers and non-technical stakeholders alike
WE'D LOVE TO MEET YOU IF
You have 4+ years of software engineering experience, with a strong focus on infrastructure, platform, or database systems
You have solid hands-on experience with PostgreSQL: replication, failover, configuration tuning, ideally cluster management at scale, and experience with tools like Patroni is a meaningful plus
You write clean, production-grade code in Go and/or Python, and you understand what "owning your code" means past the merge
You're well-versed in AWS infrastructure and Kubernetes, and have worked with or around operator patterns
You think in systems: distributed consensus, failure modes, and the question of what actually happens when a primary goes down are things you find genuinely interesting
You're fluent in SQL — not just writing queries, but reading execution plans, spotting bottlenecks, and helping teams of varying technical backgrounds get the most out of their databases
You bring strong communication skills — translating complex database concepts clearly for engineers and non-engineers alike is part of the role
Open-source contributions, especially in the database or infrastructure space, are a big plus — we publish our work and love someone who does the same
OUR OFFER
Zalando provides a range of benefits, here’s an overview of what you can expect. Ask your Talent Acquisition Partner to learn more about what we offer.
27 days of holiday a year to start for full-time employees (+1 day for every calendar year up to 30 days)
2 paid volunteering days a year
Hybrid working model with up to 60% remote per week, actual practice is up to each team to best support their collaboration
Work from abroad for up to 30 working days a year
Employee shares program
40% off fashion and beauty products sold and shipped by Zalando, 30% off Lounge by Zalando, discounts from external partners
Relocation assistance available (subject to prior agreement)
Family services, including counseling and support
Health and wellbeing options (including Wellhub, formerly Gympass)
Mental health support and coaching available
Drive your development through our training platform and biannual peer-to-peer review
