Cherokee Federal

Join a leading East Coast government contracting firm supporting mission-critical modernization efforts for a major U.S. Government agency. As a Senior PostgreSQL DBA, you will play a pivotal role in designing, optimizing, and maintaining high-performance PostgreSQL databases in a secure, virtualized AWS environment. This position offers the opportunity to leverage modern tooling and AI-assisted development practices to accelerate delivery and innovation on high-impact federal projects.

Key Responsibilities

• Administer, tune, and optimize PostgreSQL databases
• Design and implement efficient schemas, indexes, views, stored procedures, functions, and complex queries to support business logic and analytics.
• Monitor database health, performance, and security using native PostgreSQL tools, pgAdmin, CloudWatch, and third-party solutions.
• Perform database migrations, backups, restores, upgrades, and data conversion projects with minimal downtime.
• Automate routine DBA tasks using Python scripting and infrastructure-as-code (e.g., Terraform).
• Leverage AI-powered tools (e.g., GitHub Copilot, Amazon CodeWhisperer, pgAI extensions, or similar) to accelerate code generation, query optimization, and project delivery.
• Collaborate with data engineers, developers, and analysts to enable AI/ML workloads, feature stores, and real-time analytics on PostgreSQL.
• Ensure compliance with federal security standards (FISMA, NIST 800-53) through encryption, auditing, access controls, and vulnerability management.
• Provide on-call support for production systems and mentor junior team members.

Required Qualifications

• 6+ years of hands-on PostgreSQL administration experience in production environments.
• 4+ years working with AWS cloud services, specifically RDS PostgreSQL, Lambda, and AWS Glue.
• Strong proficiency in SQL and PL/pgSQL; experience writing and optimizing complex queries, stored procedures, triggers, and user-defined functions.
• 3+ years of Python scripting for automation, monitoring, and integration tasks.
• Demonstrated experience using AI-assisted coding tools to improve productivity in database development and administration.
• Proven track record on database migration, backup/recovery, and performance tuning projects.
• Overall 10+ years of IT/database experience.
• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, or related field (or equivalent experience).
• U.S. Citizenship and ability to pass a federal background check.

Preferred Qualifications

• PostgreSQL Professional Certification (e.g., EDB Certified PostgreSQL Professional).
• Experience with ETL tools (e.g., pg_dump, Airbyte) and data warehousing patterns.
• Familiarity with containerization (Docker/Kubernetes) and CI/CD pipelines for database changes.
• Knowledge of extensions such as PostGIS, TimescaleDB, or vector extensions (pgvector) for AI/ML use cases.
• Prior experience in federal/government contracting environments.

Ideal Candidate Profile

• Analytical problem-solver who thrives on optimizing complex systems.
• Excellent communication skills—able to explain technical concepts to both technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• Proactive, self-motivated, and committed to continuous learning and professional growth.

Job Type: Full-time

Pay: $150,000.00 - $180,000.00 per year

Work Location: Hybrid remote in Washington, DC 20003