Staff Database Reliability Engineer

Who is Boulevard?

Boulevard provides the first and only client experience platform for appointment-based, self-care businesses. We empower our customers to give their clients more of the magical moments that matter most.

Before launching in 2016, our founders spent months interviewing salon managers and working behind front desks to understand their pain points so we could design a modern, user-friendly platform that meets the unique needs of their business. Our roots may be in hair salons, but we are built for the broader self-care industry, including many types of salons, spas, medspa, barbershops, and more. Our technology not only helps our customers survive but thrive. Take a look at how we (and YOU) can make that happen. 

We have an insatiable curiosity and embrace experimentation. We believe that simple solutions require the most sophistication, and we design each and every detail to maximize potential, power, and impact. Do our values match? Read through our story and what we value the most.

Our team values and celebrates our diverse backgrounds. Being open about who we are and what we do allows us to do the best work of our lives. We believe in equal opportunity for all, and you should too.

Come do the best work of your life at Boulevard.

We’re hiring a Staff Database Reliability Engineer to shape the foundation of Database Reliability Engineering at Boulevard. This role goes beyond optimizing queries or reviewing SQL PRs — you’ll own database reliability at scale within our cloud-based infrastructure, influence site reliability practices, and drive our RDBMS scalability strategy. You’ll help teams improve how they design, operate, and depend on databases through repeatable, reliable practices.

Reporting to the Director of Cloud & Reliability, this is a hands-on technical leadership role focused on elevating reliability practices and building resilient database platforms. You’ll define what “good” looks like, partner closely with engineering teams, and help Boulevard operate databases that scale with confidence.

The Cloud & Reliability group operates on four foundational principles:

1. Reliable Infrastructure — a foundation of stability and security
2. Developer Productivity — empowering builders to do the right things
3. Clear Ownership — accountability aligned with ownership; collaboration over silos
4. Long-Term Focus — we engineer for tomorrow

Key Projects & Initiatives

• Database Reliability & Fault Tolerance: Lead initiatives to make our database platforms more robust, fault-tolerant, and self-healing.
• Platform Performance Optimization: Drive continuous improvement in performance and cost efficiency, using observability data to identify and resolve bottlenecks with a focus on RDBMS infrastructure.
• Observability & Operational Insight: Enhance database observability across metrics, logging, and tracing to ensure deep visibility into production health and behavior.

What You’ll Do Here

• Develop a deep understanding of how Boulevard’s systems behave, scale, interact, and fail, and use that insight to identify risks and improvement opportunities.
• Own and improve database reliability, performance, and scalability; participate in incident response and drive architectural improvements that reduce incident frequency and impact.
• Partner with engineering teams to design, build, and operate scalable, fault-tolerant, and secure distributed systems that support Boulevard’s growth and customer trust.
• Build tools, automation, and frameworks that eliminate toil, reduce operational overhead, and establish best practices used across engineering teams.
• Elevate observability and operational excellence through actionable metrics, alerts, and dashboards that enable faster incident resolution and proactive reliability improvements.
• Mentor and influence engineers across the organization, helping foster a culture where reliability is a shared responsibility.

What You’ll Need to Thrive

• Deep Systems Expertise: 8–10+ years of experience in systems, infrastructure, or backend software engineering, with a strong focus on RDBMS and NoSQL systems.
• Cloud Database Experience: Production experience with managed cloud databases such as AWS Aurora/RDS (PostgreSQL), and deploying/managing infrastructure using infrastructure-as-code tools.
• Reliability Engineering Mindset: Proven experience delivering reliability outcomes using SLOs, SLIs, error budgets, and mature observability practices.
• Automation-First Philosophy: Strong background in automation, scripting, and infrastructure-as-code (e.g., Terraform, Python, Go, or similar).
• Incident Management Mastery: Experience diagnosing and mitigating production incidents in high-availability systems, with a focus on learning and continuous improvement.
• Collaboration & Influence: Excellent communication skills and the ability to influence without authority across engineering teams.
• Technical Leadership & Mentorship: Demonstrated ability to set technical standards, mentor engineers, and scale impact through others.
• Comfort with Ambiguity: Ability to navigate uncertainty, set direction, and iterate toward meaningful outcomes in a fast-moving environment.

Bonus

• Experience with Elixir, Phoenix, Ruby, or Rails
• Hands-on experience identifying and improving database performance

In addition to the wonderful people you’ll get to work with and challenging projects that’ll push you - Boulevard is here to make sure you’re always at the top of your game emotionally, mentally, and physically. 

• ✨ We’ve got you covered with a 401(k) match plus dental, medical, vision, and life insurance. 

• 🏝 Take a break whenever you need with our flexible vacation day policy. 

• 🖥 Fully remote so you can choose where you want to work. You’ll receive a work from home stipend every month. 

• 💚 Family planning resources and specialized support programs. 

• 🔮 Equity: get ahead on the ground floor and grow with Boulevard. 

• 💅 Boulevard Bucks Learning and Development program allows employees to explore businesses in the market we serve.

📲 We recommend following our official LinkedIn page to stay up to date on all things Boulevard life!

Boulevard Labs, Inc. is an Equal Opportunity Employer committed to hiring a diverse workforce and sustaining an inclusive culture. All employment decisions at Boulevard Labs, Inc. are based on business needs, job requirements, and individual qualifications, without regard to race, color, religion, marital status, age, national origin, ancestry, physical or mental disability, medical condition, pregnancy, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, veteran status, or any other status protected under federal, state, or local law.