Staff Engineer II - Database Engineering

Job Title:

Staff Engineer II - Database Engineering

Location:

TX - Dallas/Irving

What you'll do:

We are seeking a Staff Engineer II with strong hands-on experience supporting Oracle and Microsoft SQL Server platforms in highly regulated, enterprise environments. This role provides deep technical expertise to ensure database solutions are safe, secure, compliant, reliable, and performant, while also leading design efforts, mentoring peers, and collaborating across technology and business teams.

The ideal candidate demonstrates advanced engineering judgment, strong operational discipline, and the ability to guide teams through complex technical and compliance-driven initiatives spanning on Prem and cloud environments.

• Lead the technical planning and solution design for database initiatives, ensuring alignment with business goals, security standards, and regulatory requirements.
• Design, implement, and maintain reliable, resilient, and recoverable database solutions across Oracle and SQL Server platforms.
• Engineer and support high-availability and disaster recovery solutions, including backup, restore validation, replication, and DR testing.
• Monitor, analyze, and optimize database performance, availability, scalability, and security, including transaction-specific performance metrics that can be shared with business partners.
• Troubleshoot and resolve complex database issues related to performance, data integrity, concurrency, backup/recovery, replication, upgrades, and migrations.
• Establish, maintain, and enforce database standards, policies, procedures, and operational best practices, including secure configuration and hardening.
• Develop and maintain technical documentation, runbooks, and desktop procedures that others can execute, ensuring compliance with IT policies and industry standards.
• Serve as a subject matter expert for SOX, GDPR, audit, and security controls, supporting exams, evidence collection, remediation efforts, and control validation.
• Collaborate with application, infrastructure, cloud, DevOps, security, risk, and audit teams to ensure database solutions integrate cleanly with enterprise platforms.
• Review application database scripts for efficiency, performance, and compliance with standards.
• Implement automation and scripting to improve operational efficiency, reduce risk, and support compliance validation.
• Provide technical leadership and mentoring to other engineers and act as an escalation point for complex production or compliance-related issues.
• Support multiple projects simultaneously using disciplined governance, intake, and delivery practices.

What you'll need:

• 7+ years of hands-on experience engineering and supporting Oracle and Microsoft SQL Server databases in production environments.
• Bachelor's degree in related field required.
• Strong experience designing and supporting backup, recovery, high availability, and disaster recovery solutions.
• Demonstrated experience supporting regulated environments, including SOX, GDPR, internal/external audits, and security assessments.
• Advanced understanding of database security concepts, including encryption, access controls, audit logging, and separation of duties.
• Ability to troubleshoot issues end-to-end, from application behavior through database and infrastructure layers.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to create clear documentation and technical narratives.
• Experience creating standard operating procedures (SOPs/MOPs) and operational documentation.
• Strong collaboration, problem-solving, and leadership skills.
• Proficiency with common productivity tools (Excel, PowerPoint, Word).
• Previous leadership experience preferred.
• Intermediate to advanced knowledge of general Financial Services or Banking is preferred.
• Advanced knowledge of applicable regulatory and legal compliance obligations, rules and regulations, industry standards and practices.
• Advanced proven experience in leading cross-functional teams and managing multiple projects simultaneously. Additional experience with pipeline development and leveraging Azure DevOps while working on multiple projects simultaneously.
• Advanced ability to see the big picture and align projects with organizational goals. Capable of leading and motivating cross-functional teams. Expertise in resolving conflicts and addressing challenges as well as skilled at identifying and mitigating risks at the project level. Proficient in governance patterns tied to intake, technical reviews and architectural compliance.
• May require up to 25% travel.
• Must work onsite in office 4-days per week.

Benefits you’ll love:
We offer all the important things you'd want — like competitive salaries, an ownership stake in the company, medical and dental insurance, time off, a great 401k matching program, tuition assistance program, an employee volunteer program, and a wellness program. In addition, you’ll have the opportunity to bolster your business knowledge, learning the ins and outs of how successful companies operate and manage their finances, giving you invaluable hands-on experience to help grow your career!

About the company:

Western Alliance Bank, Member FDIC, is a wholly owned subsidiary of Western Alliance Bancorporation. Serving clients nationwide, Western Alliance Bank includes six legacy bank brands — Alliance Association Bank, Alliance Bank of Arizona, Bank of Nevada, Bridge Bank, First Independent Bank and Torrey Pines Bank — that remain part of the company’s heritage, as well as AmeriHome Mortgage, a Western Alliance Bank Company.

Western Alliance Bancorporation is committed to equal employment and will consider all qualified applicants without regard to race, sex, color, religion, age, nation origin, marital status, disability, protected veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity or genetic information. Western Alliance Bancorporation is committed to working with and providing reasonable accommodations for individuals with disabilities. If you are an individual with a disability and require a reasonable accommodation to complete any part of the application process and/or need an alternative method of applying, please email HR@westernalliancebank.com or call 602-386-2488.  When contacting us, please provide your contact information and state the nature of your accessibility issue.  We will only respond to inquiries concerning requests that involve a reasonable accommodation in the application process.

© Western Alliance Bancorporation