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Senior Database Engineer

Crunchyroll

San Francisco, CA, USonsiteOther

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About this role

About Crunchyroll

Founded by fans, Crunchyroll delivers the art and culture of anime to a passionate community. We super-serve over 100 million anime and manga fans across 200+ countries and territories, and help them connect with the stories and characters they crave. Whether that experience is online or in-person, streaming video, theatrical, games, merchandise, events and more, it’s powered by the anime content we all love.

Join our team, and help us shape the future of anime!

About the role

Crunchyroll is growing and changing, presenting unique challenges and opportunities to support millions of anime fans around the world. The Data Engineering team provides seamless help to our internal stakeholders, ensuring an exceptional experience for all Crunchyroll fans.

As a Database Engineer for the Data Engineering team, you will be responsible for maintaining and enhancing the reliability of our data infrastructure. Your work will directly impact the availability and performance of our data services, enabling the organization to make data-driven decisions. You will collaborate closely with data engineers, and software engineers to develop and drive 100% automation, best practices for deep monitoring and alerting.

Key Areas of Responsibility

• Database Strategy & Technical Leadership: Act as the strategic subject matter expert for database engine best practices, storage engines, and long-term data placement strategy across the broader engineering organization. Partner with tech leadership to raise the collective database expertise of the team.

• SQL Optimization & Application Performance: Drive deep application performance analysis. Own the identification, debugging, and elimination of query execution bottlenecks, optimizing raw SQL, missing indexes, execution plans, and data models to maximize throughput and minimize latency.

• Cloud Database Architecture & Scale: Design, scale, and evaluate schemas leveraging AWS-native database services, including Amazon RDS, Aurora (MySQL/PostgreSQL), and NoSQL engines (DynamoDB), ensuring systems adhere strictly to rigorous scalability benchmarks.

• Database Internals & Systems Analysis: Execute deep-dive performance forensics into database engine behaviors, memory structures, replication lag, locking mechanisms, and OS/hardware saturation metrics (such as Disk/IO performance) to preemptively address platform degradation.

• Engineering Mentorship & Advisory: Partner closely with internal application development and data teams to review data access patterns, optimize application-level database interaction layers, and establish organizational standards around indexing and schema configurations.

• Cross-Functional Collaboration: Partner with Database SRE specialists to ensure highly optimized query layouts, correct database configuration and schemas translate seamlessly into platform automation and IaC frameworks.

About You

We get excited about candidates, like you, because...

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, or a related field.

• 8+ years of experience in database operations, or a related role with a focus on data platforms, data stores, data operations.

• Deep experience in AWS RDS, Aurora and NoSQL is a must.

• Extensive experience with AWS cloud platform and their data-related services.

• Proficiency in monitoring tools (e.g., Datadog, CloudWatch, DevOps Guru, DB Performance Insights).

• Proficiency in one or more programming languages (e.g. Python, Java)

• Strong understanding of various performance metrics both at a high level and at a low level like Disk/IO saturation.

• Experience in identifying and eliminating the bottlenecks in the system.

• Strong understanding of database internals like types of indexes, schemas, query plans.

• Strong understanding of database systems (e.g., SQL, NoSQL) and experience in managing large-scale data infrastructures.

• Basic knowledge and some hands-on implementation of CI/CD pipelines and DatabaseOps practices.

• Experience with data governance, compliance, and lifecycle management.

• Strong problem-solving skills and a proactive approach to identifying and addressing issues.

• Ability to independently own and execute projects while effectively collaborating with the team to influence and shape the vision of the data engineering organization.

• Strong communication skills and the ability to mentor and guide junior engineers.

About the Team

The Database Engineering team is dedicated to ensuring the reliability, scalability, and performance of our data infrastructure. We focus on standardizing and implementing monitoring and alerting across all datastores to track key metrics like errors, latency, and throughput, and to ensure critical systems are covered. Our team also leads efforts to keep databases up-to-date, implements Infrastructure as Code (IaC) for high availability and performance, and automates key processes to enhance operational efficiency.

We lead and evangelize the principle of 100% automation. Additionally, we define and document operational requirements, develop incident response processes, and automate monitoring and compliance checks to maintain a secure and reliable data environment. By continuously improving load testing and optimizing data governance practices, we support the overall health and efficiency of our data systems.

Why you will love working at Crunchyroll

In addition to getting to work with fun, passionate and inspired colleagues, you will also enjoy the following benefits and perks:

• Receive a great compensation package including salary plus performance bonus earning potential, paid annually.

• Flexible time off policies allowing you to take the time you need to be your whole self.

• Generous medical, dental, vision, STD, LTD, and life insurance

• Health Saving Account HSA program

• Health care and dependent care FSA

• 401(k) plan, with employer match

• Employer paid commuter benefit

• Support program for new

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