Senior Database Reliability Engineer

Who Are We

HALA is a leading fintech player in the MENAP region that aims to redefine financial services and build the future bank of SMEs. HALA aims at empowering SMEs to start, run, and grow their businesses by providing them with cutting-edge financial and technological tools.

HALA currently holds multiple entities in UAE, Saudi Arabia and Egypt (including HALA Payments, HALA Cashier and HALA Logistics) and offers solutions that enable merchants to digitize their payments as well as manage their sales and operations.

Founded in 2017, HALA is currently duly licensed by the Saudi Arabian Central Bank as well as the Financials Services Regulatory Authority (FSRA) in Abu Dhabi Global Market.

Responsibilities:  

• Architect, design, and implement highly available, scalable, and resilient database solutions, defining standards for sharding, replication, and failover.
• Lead the automation of all databases operational tasks, including provisioning, backups, patching, upgrading, and scaling, to minimize toil and improve efficiency.
• Develop and manage comprehensive monitoring and observability for all database systems, establishing key SLOs/SLIs and creating actionable alerting.
• Act as the primary point of escalation for complex database incidents, leading post-mortems and driving long-term remediation to prevent recurrence.
• Define and enforce database security best practices, working closely with security teams to manage access controls, encryption, and auditability.
• Own database performance tuning and capacity planning, proactively identifying and resolving performance bottlenecks through query optimization and infrastructure scaling.
• Provide technical leadership and mentorship to junior engineers and development teams on database best practices, schema design, and query optimization.

Skills:

•           Proficiency in infrastructure-as-code (IaC) with tools like Terraform or Ansible, and strong scripting skills (Python, Go, or Bash) for automation.
•           Expert knowledge of database monitoring, observability, and alerting strategies using tools like Prometheus, Grafana, or Dynatrace.
•           Strong understanding of database high availability (HA), disaster recovery (DR), sharding, replication, and data-tier architecture for scalability and resilience.

Experience:

6+ years of progressive experience in database administration, database engineering, or a dedicated DBRE role. Proven track record of managing large-scale, high-throughput production database environments.

• We have an inclusive and diverse culture that encourages innovation and flexibility in remote, in-office, and hybrid work setups.
• We offer highly competitive compensation packages, including the potential for shares.
• We prioritize personal development and offer regular training and an annual learning stipend to tackle new challenges and grow your career in a hyper-growth environment.
• Join a talented team of over 30 nationalities working in 7 countries and gain valuable experience in an exciting industry.
• We offer autonomy, mentoring, and challenging goals that create incredible opportunities for both you and the company.
• You will be given a lot of responsibility and trust. We believe that the best results come when the people responsible for a function are given the freedom to do what they think is best.