Database Engineer
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- Build correct schemas and understand how the database actually stores and finds data
- Tune execution and transactions, then reason about replication and distributed tradeoffs
- Operate high-throughput databases safely with performance, reliability and migration discipline
Benchmark: OpenAI Database Systems + Anthropic Staff+ Software Engineer, Databases (current Sep 2026) + CMU 15-445/645 Database Systems (Fall 2026) Market refresh: SQL and data modeling, indexes and query plans, database internals, transactions/MVCC, query execution and optimization, distributed storage/replication, migrations, performance, reliability and operability.
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Enrichment
Build correct schemas and understand how the database actually stores and finds data
Relational modeling, SQL + indexes
Coverage: SQL / Normalization / Query Plans / B+Trees / Index Selectivity
Storage engines + transaction foundations
Coverage: Storage / Buffering / ACID / Isolation / Durability
Tune execution and transactions, then reason about replication and distributed tradeoffs
Query execution, optimization + performance diagnosis
Coverage: Query Operators / Cost Models / EXPLAIN / Join Ordering / Statistics
Replication, sharding + distributed transactions
Coverage: Replication / Consensus / Partitioning / Distributed SQL / Consistency
Operate high-throughput databases safely with performance, reliability and migration discipline
Capacity, benchmarking + production performance
Coverage: Load Tests / Hotspots / Query Latency / Throughput / Resource Efficiency
Reliability, migrations + database operations
Coverage: Backups / Recovery / Schema Migration / Observability / Incident Response
Role-Readiness Proof / Capstone
Complete a 5-day Database Engineering Lab: design a relational schema and workload; generate 10M+ rows; create and justify indexes; analyze EXPLAIN plans; implement transactions and concurrency tests; benchmark reads/writes; introduce one replication or partitioning strategy; perform a zero/low-downtime schema migration; configure backup/restore, monitoring and SLOs; trigger a failure and document recovery and rollback.
Proof Rubric
- Correct schema and constraints
- evidence-based indexing
- explainable query plans
- concurrency/isolation correctness
- reproducible benchmark
- quantified latency/throughput/cost
- safe migration and rollback
- backup/restore proof
- observability and incident response
- clear tradeoffs across consistency, availability, performance and operational complexity