Sr. Database Reliability Engineer II

Disclaimer: Please be advised that the most accurate and up-to-date information about our open rolesincluding job descriptions compensation and benefitscan only be guaranteed on our official job board. For the latest listings and details please visit: US ON OUR MISSION TO BECOME THE #1 RETAIL TRADING PLATFORM IN THE WORLD

Welcome to the dynamic world of NinjaTrader! As an industry-leading trading platform and futures broker were empowering traders to take control of their financial destiny. How do we do it We provide cutting-edge products and services that enhance the trading journey. Whether a seasoned pro or just starting out NinjaTrader equips traders with award-winning software and brokerage services to navigate the worlds leading financial markets with confidence.

Our growth story is nothing short of exhilarating. Since 2003 NinjaTrader has been dedicated to understanding and supporting traders on their journey toward trading triumph. Through those efforts our user base has grown to over 2 million users and we have become the number one rated futures brokerage worldwide.

But were not stopping there. Were constantly evolving pushing boundaries and modernizing the futures industry. Our commitment to innovation means users will always have access to dynamic tools real-time support and a community of like-minded traders.

So why work at NinjaTrader Here youre not just part of a team; youre part of a movement. We empower employees to reach new heights in their careers by providing a dynamic culture focused on social connection professional development and employee recognition initiatives. Sounds too good to be trueTake it from our employees.

Join us as we redefine whats possible in trading advocate for our customers and continue our journey toward becoming the worlds top retail-focused trading platform in the world.

As a Sr. Database ReliabilityEngineer II you will help architect evolve and optimize the data platform powering NinjaTraders core trading applications. This is not a traditional Database Administrator (DBA) role. Were looking for a software engineer with deep MySQL/Postgres expertise who enjoys solving complex data challenges while remaining actively involved in software development.

Youll partner closely with software engineers architects and platform teams to improve database performance evolve our data architecture build developer tooling and establish engineering best practices that enable our platform to continue scaling. Youll play a key role in shaping the future direction of our data platform by driving initiatives that improve scalability resiliency developer productivity and operational excellence.

This role is ideal for someone who has spent their career building production software and naturally became the database expert responsible for solving performance bottlenecks designing scalable schemas and improving application reliability.

In this role you will:

• Design and evolve MySQL schemas supporting high-volume transactional workloads
• Define and drive improvements to NinjaTraders data platform architecture including online schema changes zero/low-downtime database migrations blue/green deployments and scalability initiatives that support long-term platform growth.
• Analyze and optimize SQL queries indexes and execution plans to improve application performance
• Develop production-quality software that improves our persistence layer developer tooling and data platform capabilities
• Design scalable data models that balance performance maintainability and long-term growth
• Build reusable libraries frameworks and tooling that simplify data access and improve developer productivity across engineering teams
• Lead database performance tuning initiatives across applications and services
• Drive modernization initiatives for database architecture deployment processes and operational reliability
• Design and implement safe repeatable database migration strategies supporting continuous delivery
• Investigate and resolve complex production issues involving application performance database behavior locking concurrency and data integrity
• Establish engineering standards and best practices for schema design indexing SQL development database migrations and data access patterns
• Partner with Platform Engineering to improve database monitoring backup strategies disaster recovery and operational resilience
• Leverage Google Cloud Platform services including Cloud SQL Cloud Monitoring Cloud Logging and related tooling to improve the reliability scalability and observability of our data platform
• Mentor engineers on data modeling SQL optimization MySQL best practices and application performance optimization
• Lead technical design discussions and architecture reviews related to database-backed applications
• Evaluate emerging technologies and recommend solutions that improve platform scalability maintainability and engineering efficiency
• Serve as a technical leader and trusted advisor for database architecture application performance and data platform best practices

• Bachelors degree in Computer Science Computer Engineering or a related technical field or equivalent practical experience
• 8 years of professional software engineering experience
• Strong experience building backend applications using Java C# Go Python Kotlin Scala or similar modern programming languages
• Expert-level experience with MySQL in large-scale production environments
• Deep understanding of:
  • SQL optimization
  • Query execution plans
  • Indexing strategies
  • Transactions and isolation levels
  • Locking and concurrency
  • Schema design and normalization
  • Replication and high availability
• Experience designing scalable database schemas for high-volume transactional applications
• Experience troubleshooting complex application and database performance issues
• Experience implementing database migration strategies supporting continuous delivery
• Strong understanding of software architecture distributed systems and engineering best practices
• Experience leading technical initiatives and influencing architectural decisions across engineering teams
• Excellent collaboration and communication skills with the ability to explain complex technical concepts to engineers and cross-functional stakeholders
• Passion for improving developer productivity by building automation developer tooling database testing frameworks performance benchmarking harnesses and engineering best practices.

• Experience building and operating applications on Google Cloud Platform (GCP)
• Experience with Cloud SQL for MySQL
• Experience using Google Cloud services such as Cloud Monitoring Cloud Logging Pub/Sub Cloud Storage Secret Manager Cloud Build or Cloud Deploy
• Experience supporting financial services trading platforms or other high-throughput transactional systems
• Experience working in startup or high-growth engineering environments where engineers owned both application development and database performance
• Experience improving developer productivity through tooling and automation
• Experience designing highly available fault-tolerant distributed systems
• Experience implementing observability solutions performance monitoring and database telemetry
• Experience leveraging AI/ML tools or technologies to improve software development operational efficiency or engineering productivity

Compensation:

The salary range for this role will be $130000.00 - $180000.00 addition this position will also receive an annual target bonus of 10%. Bonus pay at NinjaTrader is based on individual performance (50%) as well as company/team performance (50%).

Salary and bonus earnings are only two components of the total compensation package offered by NinjaTrader. NinjaTrader offers a 401K plan through ADP under which the company will match up to 3.5% of employee contributions. Annual paid time off allowance accrues at a rate of 18 days per year plus seven paid holidays.

All offered compensation will be based on assessed experience and is subject to change at the offer stage.

Location:

This role is based in Chicago IL. *There may be remote flexibility for exceptional candidates in the following states: California Colorado Florida Georgia Illinois Indiana Minnesota Missouri Montana New Jersey New York North Carolina Ohio Oregon Pennsylvania South Carolina Texas Utah Vermont Virginia Washington Washington DC Wisconsin.

Hybrid:

For Chicago-based employees we follow a hybrid work schedule: In-office Tuesday through Thursday with remote work on Mondays and addition to these weekly remote days we offer:

• 20 additional flex remote days annually
• 5 Company Wide Office-Optional weeks tied to major holidays

Our Core Benefits Include:

• Generous PTO
• 7 Paid Holidays Annually 5 Conditional Holidays Annually
• 1 Service Day Annually
• 401k with 3.5% Company Match
• Paid Parental Bonding Leave
• Health Vision Dental Coverage
• Life and Disability Insurance Covered 100% by NinjaTrader

We are committed to equal employment opportunity regardless of race color ancestry religion sex national origin sexual orientation age citizenship marital status disability gender gender identity or expression or veteran status. We are proud to be an equal opportunity workplace.