Senior PostgreSQL & Backend Reliability Engineer (TypeScript/AWS)

We are looking for a senior PostgreSQL and backend reliability engineer to join our team for a long-term engagement. We operate a live healthcare SaaS platform used by emergency medical service organizations. This is not a greenfield project or a general website-development role. Our application is already in production and handles regulated healthcare and financial information. Our technology stack includes: - PostgreSQL on AWS RDS - TypeScript and Node.js - React and React Native - AWS ECS, S3, SQS, and CloudWatch - Docker and GitHub Actions THE IMMEDIATE PRIORITY Our database has accumulated a large migration history. We need an experienced engineer to help us make the database clean, understandable, consistent, and dependable. Your first major project will include: - Comparing development, production, and the committed schema - Identifying schema drift and migration inconsistencies - Verifying that migrations work from a clean environment - Investigating data-integrity problems - Improving constraints, indexes, and database safeguards - Creating a clean, tested schema baseline for future development - Developing a safe forward-only plan without rewriting production history - Adding automated checks that detect problems before deployment You will not simply delete, rename, or consolidate migrations without understanding what has already run in production. This requires careful investigation, testing, documentation, and safe execution. ONGOING RESPONSIBILITIES After the initial database work, you will own: - PostgreSQL schema design and reliability - Safe migrations, backfills, and reconciliation scripts - Financial-data and ledger reconciliation - Query performance and indexing - Transactions, locking, concurrency, and constraints - Database restore and bootstrap testing - TypeScript/Node.js backend development - Automated tests and CI/CD safeguards - AWS RDS and ECS migration tasks - Production diagnostics using CloudWatch - Technical documentation and code review - Protecting sensitive information in logs, test data, and development tools HOW WE WILL WORK TOGETHER The product owner works extensively with AI tools for research, requirements, investigation, and initial implementation. Your role will be different from the AI’s role. We need an experienced engineer who can: - Validate assumptions against the actual database and application - Review AI-generated code and migrations critically - Identify operational risks automated tools may miss - Turn investigations into safe production implementations - Own testing, deployment readiness, and ongoing reliability - Clearly explain problems and recommendations to a non-technical owner - Push back when a proposed solution is unsafe or unnecessarily complicated We are not looking for someone who only completes isolated tickets. We want someone who takes ownership, investigates thoroughly, and leaves systems simpler and more reliable than they found them. REQUIRED EXPERIENCE - Deep production PostgreSQL and SQL experience - Strong TypeScript and Node.js backend experience - Complex migrations in live production systems - Transactions, locking, constraints, indexes, and query plans - Data reconciliation and safe corrective scripts - AWS RDS and containerized deployments - Automated testing and CI/CD - Strong security and data-privacy practices - Excellent written and spoken English - At least 2–3 hours of reliable overlap with US Eastern Time Experience with healthcare, insurance, billing, fintech, accounting ledgers, or other regulated systems is a strong advantage. ENGAGEMENT DETAILS - Long-term hourly engagement - Approximately 20–30 hours per week initially - Opportunity to expand for the right person - Paid, clearly scoped trial project - Individual freelancers preferred - You must personally perform the work - No undisclosed subcontractors or shared system access TO APPLY Please answer the following in your proposal: 1. Describe a difficult PostgreSQL migration or schema-drift problem you personally resolved in production. What failed, and how did you fix it? 2. How would you establish a clean database baseline for an application with hundreds of already-applied migrations? 3. How would you investigate a stored financial balance that disagrees with the balance calculated from its transaction ledger? 4. What automated safeguards would you add to prevent migration and data-integrity problems? 5. What hours can you reliably overlap with US Eastern Time? 6. Will you personally perform all work and be the only person accessing our code and systems? Generic proposals that do not answer these questions will not be considered.