Principal Consultant, OSDB

What will you be doing?

• Provide, at a high level of technical capability, coordination, analysis, design, implementation, and administration of customer IT solutions and take on or assist with the most difficult technical problems, as escalated by the technical delivery teams
• Review the work of all teams within the practice for quality and adherence to technical processes and standards
• Serve as the third-tier on-call technical escalation point for the database consulting delivery teams within the practice.
• Provide technical documentation templates to be used by the team for customer work
• Provide technical leadership on customer accounts as well as technical leadership and oversight to all database consultants within the practice.

Serve as the most senior technical resource in the delivery of:
• New MySQL deployments
• Database upgrades and migrations
• Troubleshooting of operational problems, including performance
• Restoration and recovery of corrupted databases
• Database server configuration and maintenance
• Administration of backup procedures and disaster recovery plans
• Debugging high priority issues on mission critical production environments
• Recommendation of best practices for improvements to current operational processes and procedures


• Review customer database technology requirements
• Write and present database recommendations to customers
• Assist customers in the design and development of technology proof of concept evaluations
• Together with other team members, take on a personal ownership stake in customer satisfaction.
• Take on a leadership role in recommending new monitoring checks, enhancement to Database Consultants toolkits, and other process improvements, especially but not limited to those that increase the value of the service that Pythian brings to its customers.
• Takes on a leadership role in suggesting and/or recommending improvements to internal systems tools
• In collaboration with Marketing, take on a leadership role in the preparation of marketing collateral including but not limited to web site material and presentations at conferences or trade shows, participation in local user groups, and on the technology blogging front.
• Investigate and assesse new technologies and developments relevant to Pythian. Document findings or otherwise advise team members, including those from other practices, to increase awareness and capabilities of Pythian staff, and, with the approval of one’s manager, assists in the preparation and presentation of employee training courses or materials.
• Take on a leadership role in the help and mentoring of team members within the practice.

What do we need from you?

• Strong expertise in MySQL, MariaDB, and clustering solutions including Galera Cluster
• Proven experience with high availability and read/write splitting technologies including Orchestrator and ProxySQL
• Cloud technologies (AWS and GCP) expertise is a must
• Typically requires a minimum of 15 years of related Open Source database experience and you must have a passion for customer service and advocacy
• Multiple relevant certifications is an asset
• Demonstrated experience in one or more Object Oriented Programming Languages. (I.e. Python or GoLang)
• Advanced proficiency in SQL
• Ansible, Terraform, CloudFormation experience
• Proven track record of taking initiative to move opportunities forward and are excited about supporting multiple complex, distributed environments.
• Demonstrated experience in coaching and mentoring and are eager to share, teach and mentor your customers, your peers and the community.
• Driven to constantly learn and grow and you want to stay at the bleeding edge of technology by the sheer breadth and depth of multiple customer environments and technologies that you will be exposed to.
• Consistently and regularly advocating and evangelizing for both technical and non-technical excellence
• Ability to understand and implement emerging technical and non-technical concepts and methodologies
• Track record of executing complex projects of the practice to a very high standard
• Are eager to deepen your contributions to the MySQL and open-source community as a participant and leader.

What do you get in return?

• Love your career: Competitive total rewards package with an annual bonus
• Love your development: Hone your skills or learn new ones with our substantial training allowance; participate in professional development days, attend conferences, become certified, whatever you like!
• Love your work/life balance: Why commute? Work remotely from your home (forever), there’s no daily travel requirement to an office! You can be located anywhere in the US or Canada, all you need is a stable internet connection.
• Love your workspace: We give you all the equipment you need to work from home including a laptop with your choice of OS, and an annual budget to personalise your work environment!
• Love your community: Blog during work hours; take a day off and volunteer for your favorite charity.