Database Engineer Jobs in California
Database Engineer jobs in California are among the most active in the country, concentrated in technology, financial services, healthcare, and entertainment across a range of experience levels from entry-level associate to principal engineer. The largest hiring markets are the San Francisco Bay Area, Los Angeles, and San Diego, where companies like Oracle, Salesforce, and Kaiser Permanente maintain significant engineering footprints. The most in-demand specializations right now are cloud-native database architecture, data warehousing, and distributed systems engineering. Find a role that fits below and apply directly.
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Showing 5 of 39+ Database Engineer jobs
Every day, tens of millions of people come to Roblox to explore, create, play, learn, and connect with friends in 3D immersive digital experiences– all created by our global community of developers and creators.
At Roblox, we’re building the tools and platform that empower our community to bring any experience that they can imagine to life. Our vision is to reimagine the way people come together, from anywhere in the world, and on any device. We’re on a mission to connect a billion people with optimism and civility, and looking for amazing talent to help us get there.
A career at Roblox means you’ll be working to shape the future of human interaction, solving unique technical challenges at scale, and helping to create safer, more civil shared experiences for everyone.
Roblox’s database team develops the next-generation, multi-tenant database platform that elastically scales and underpins every online data workload at Roblox. As a senior engineer on the database team, you will shape the architecture, build and launch critical database capabilities that keep our services fast, reliable and efficient at global scale. You will report to the Technical Director for Storage.
You will:
- Design and implement new engine features—indexing, storage formats, WAL and replication protocols, sharding, and query-planner enhancements—that push latency, throughput, and availability boundaries.
- Evolve the control plane to deliver elastic scaling, autonomous healing, and zero-downtime schema or tenant moves across global regions.
- Profile and optimize critical code paths using kernel-level tracing and advanced performance tooling; drive systematic tail-latency reductions.
- Establish engineering best practices by leading design reviews, performance benchmarks, failure drills, and post-incident retrospectives.
- Automate everything: develop frameworks for testing, CI/CD, rollout safety, observability, and autoscaling so that the platform operates hands-off at scale.
- Mentor and unblock engineers, fostering deep database craftsmanship and disseminating knowledge across Storage, Platform, and product teams.
- Engage with the open-source community—upstreaming patches, presenting learnings, and influencing the future of Postgres, RocksDB and related ecosystems.
You have:
- 6+ years of experience in software engineering or a relevant field
- Deep experience with building and operating large-scale distributed databases or storage engines (e.g., PostgreSQL, MySQL/InnoDB, RocksDB, Spanner, Aurora, AlloyDB).
- Deep expertise in database internals—B-trees, MVCC, WAL, query optimization, buffer management—and strong skills in C/C++, GO or Rust.
- Hands-on experience with consensus algorithms (Raft, Paxos) and multi-region replication models that deliver strong consistency and high availability.
- Proven success shipping high-QPS, low-latency services on container orchestration stacks (Kubernetes or Nomad) with comprehensive observability.
- Ability to turn ambiguous product requirements into a clear technical roadmap and influence cross-functional stakeholders.
- Passion for automation, rigorous testing, and data-driven decision-making that raises the reliability and efficiency bar.
- Bonus: upstream contributions to PostgreSQL, RocksDB or other OSS databases; familiarity with disaggregated storage, HTAP workloads, or custom query languages.
For roles that are based at our headquarters in San Mateo, CA: The starting base pay for this position is as shown below. The actual base pay is dependent upon a variety of job-related factors such as professional background, training, work experience, location, business needs and market demand. Therefore, in some circumstances, the actual salary could fall outside of this expected range. This pay range is subject to change and may be modified in the future. All full-time employees are also eligible for equity compensation and for benefits as described on this page.
Roles that are based in an office are onsite Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, with optional presence on Monday and Friday (unless otherwise noted).
Roblox provides equal employment opportunities to all employees and applicants for employment and prohibits discrimination and harassment of any type without regard to race, color, religion, age, sex, national origin, disability status, genetics, protected veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state or local laws. Roblox also provides reasonable accommodations to candidates with qualifying disabilities or religious beliefs during the recruiting process.
For US based roles only, please note the Company may not be able to employ candidates for this role who have United States work authorization related to certain U.S. visa categories, or support future H-1B sponsorship at this time.
Every day, tens of millions of people come to Roblox to explore, create, play, learn, and connect with friends in 3D immersive digital experiences– all created by our global community of developers and creators.
At Roblox, we’re building the tools and platform that empower our community to bring any experience that they can imagine to life. Our vision is to reimagine the way people come together, from anywhere in the world, and on any device. We’re on a mission to connect a billion people with optimism and civility, and looking for amazing talent to help us get there.
A career at Roblox means you’ll be working to shape the future of human interaction, solving unique technical challenges at scale, and helping to create safer, more civil shared experiences for everyone.
Roblox’s database team develops the next-generation, multi-tenant database platform that elastically scales and underpins every online data workload at Roblox. As a senior engineer on the database team, you will shape the architecture, build and launch critical database capabilities that keep our services fast, reliable and efficient at global scale. You will report to the Technical Director for Storage.
You will:
- Design and implement new engine features—indexing, storage formats, WAL and replication protocols, sharding, and query-planner enhancements—that push latency, throughput, and availability boundaries.
- Evolve the control plane to deliver elastic scaling, autonomous healing, and zero-downtime schema or tenant moves across global regions.
- Profile and optimize critical code paths using kernel-level tracing and advanced performance tooling; drive systematic tail-latency reductions.
- Establish engineering best practices by leading design reviews, performance benchmarks, failure drills, and post-incident retrospectives.
- Automate everything: develop frameworks for testing, CI/CD, rollout safety, observability, and autoscaling so that the platform operates hands-off at scale.
- Mentor and unblock engineers, fostering deep database craftsmanship and disseminating knowledge across Storage, Platform, and product teams.
- Engage with the open-source community—upstreaming patches, presenting learnings, and influencing the future of Postgres, RocksDB and related ecosystems.
You have:
- 6+ years of experience in software engineering or a relevant field
- Deep experience with building and operating large-scale distributed databases or storage engines (e.g., PostgreSQL, MySQL/InnoDB, RocksDB, Spanner, Aurora, AlloyDB).
- Deep expertise in database internals—B-trees, MVCC, WAL, query optimization, buffer management—and strong skills in C/C++, GO or Rust.
- Hands-on experience with consensus algorithms (Raft, Paxos) and multi-region replication models that deliver strong consistency and high availability.
- Proven success shipping high-QPS, low-latency services on container orchestration stacks (Kubernetes or Nomad) with comprehensive observability.
- Ability to turn ambiguous product requirements into a clear technical roadmap and influence cross-functional stakeholders.
- Passion for automation, rigorous testing, and data-driven decision-making that raises the reliability and efficiency bar.
- Bonus: upstream contributions to PostgreSQL, RocksDB or other OSS databases; familiarity with disaggregated storage, HTAP workloads, or custom query languages.
For roles that are based at our headquarters in San Mateo, CA: The starting base pay for this position is as shown below. The actual base pay is dependent upon a variety of job-related factors such as professional background, training, work experience, location, business needs and market demand. Therefore, in some circumstances, the actual salary could fall outside of this expected range. This pay range is subject to change and may be modified in the future. All full-time employees are also eligible for equity compensation and for benefits as described on this page.
Roles that are based in an office are onsite Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, with optional presence on Monday and Friday (unless otherwise noted).
Roblox provides equal employment opportunities to all employees and applicants for employment and prohibits discrimination and harassment of any type without regard to race, color, religion, age, sex, national origin, disability status, genetics, protected veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state or local laws. Roblox also provides reasonable accommodations to candidates with qualifying disabilities or religious beliefs during the recruiting process.
For US based roles only, please note the Company may not be able to employ candidates for this role who have United States work authorization related to certain U.S. visa categories, or support future H-1B sponsorship at this time.
See All 39 Database Engineer Jobs in California
Find roles in California that match your experience and apply in just a few clicks.
Find Database Engineer JobsDatabase Engineer Jobs by City in California
Where California roles are concentrated, by current openings.
Database Engineer Job Market in California
A snapshot from current California openings, updated as new roles post.
Who's Hiring
Top Industries Hiring
- Technology & Software
- Retail
- Science & Research
- Law & Legal Services
- Media & Entertainment
What California Employers Look For
The qualifications that appear most often in database engineer jobs across California.
- Bachelor's degree in computer science, information systems, or a closely related field
- Proficiency in SQL and at least one major database platform such as Oracle, PostgreSQL, or MySQL
- Experience designing and optimizing relational and non-relational database schemas at scale
- Hands-on knowledge of cloud database services on AWS, Google Cloud Platform, or Azure
- Familiarity with ETL pipelines, data modeling, and performance tuning methodologies
- Professional certification such as Oracle Database Administrator or Microsoft Certified: Azure Database Administrator Associate
Database Engineer Jobs in California: Frequently Asked Questions
How do you become a database engineer in California?
California does not require a state-issued license to work as a database engineer, so the path runs through education and credentials. Most California employers expect at least a bachelor's degree in computer science, information systems, or a related discipline. Earning a widely recognized certification such as Oracle Database Administrator, AWS Certified Database Specialty, or Microsoft's Azure Database Administrator credential strengthens your candidacy considerably with the large technology and healthcare employers that dominate California hiring.
How much do database engineers make in California?
Database engineers in California earn a median of about $113,060 a year, based on May 2025 Bureau of Labor Statistics wage data, ranging from around $62,410 for the lowest 10% to over $178,310 for the top 10%. Pay rises with experience, specialty, and employer.
Which companies hire database engineers in California?
Employers hiring database engineers in California right now include ByteDance, Databricks, and VSolvit, based on current listings on Migrate Mate as of September 2026. California's density of enterprise technology headquarters, major health systems, and financial services firms means consistent demand well beyond a handful of well-known names.
Which California cities have the most database engineer jobs?
San Francisco, San Jose, and Norco account for the most database engineer openings in California. The Bay Area's concentration of technology headquarters and cloud infrastructure companies drives the largest share of listings, while Los Angeles generates strong demand through media, entertainment, and fintech employers, and San Diego's growing biotech and defense sectors anchor hiring in the south.
Are there remote database engineer jobs in California?
Yes, and more than most fields. About 30% of database engineer openings tied to California are remote or hybrid as of September 2026, reflecting how much of the work involves cloud consoles, query tools, and code repositories rather than physical hardware. Schema design, performance tuning, and data pipeline development are the functions most commonly offered on a fully remote basis.
How can I get hired as a database engineer in California with little or no experience?
The most realistic entry path is a junior database administrator or data analyst role, which major California employers use as a pipeline into engineering positions. Large health systems such as Kaiser Permanente and Sutter Health, along with Bay Area technology companies, regularly bring on associate-level candidates through new-graduate programs. Building a portfolio of schema designs, migration scripts, or query optimization examples on GitHub, and earning an entry-level cloud certification, gives California hiring managers a concrete way to evaluate candidates who lack commercial experience.
Where can I find and apply to database engineer jobs in California?
You can find and apply to database engineer jobs in California on Migrate Mate, which lists current California openings across industries and experience levels. Find a role that fits and apply directly.
See All 39 Database Engineer Jobs in California
Find roles in California that match your experience and apply in just a few clicks.
Find Database Engineer Jobs