Lead Database Engineer Jobs in California (NOW HIRING)

At Acra Lending our employees enjoy an opportunity to work with great people. We celebrate several events throughout the year accompanied by raffles and giveaways for employees nationwide. We are especially proud to give back to our community and truly enjoy one another's company.
We are looking for candidates to join our team who are passionate about their vocation. Who are committed to making a contribution and are looking to gain experience in order to grow in their career. Our headquarters are located on a beautiful campus in Irvine, California and if you work out of our Irvine office we can also provide a free gym membership.
Summary
We are seeking an experienced Database Engineer with 5-10 years of experience to own the design, implementation, migration, architecture, administration, and lifecycle management of enterprise database platforms. This role focuses on Microsoft SQL Server across both on-premises and cloud environments, including AWS RDS architecture, migrations, optimization, monitoring, and operational management. The role also supports a broad range of SQL-based technologies and modern data platforms, including data warehouses and data lake solutions (e.g., Snowflake or similar).
The ideal candidate brings strong hands-on experience building and maintaining ETL/ELT pipelines, enabling reliable data exchange between systems, and supporting reporting and analytics workloads. Experience designing and executing cloud database migration strategies, particularly migrating on-prem SQL Server environments to AWS RDS, is highly desirable. This role plays a key part in ensuring data is well-structured, secure, highly available, accessible, and efficiently processed across operational and analytical systems while supporting scalable cloud-native data architectures.
Compensation
Base salary: $135K - $150K based on experience.
Essential Duties and Responsibilities

• Own the design, implementation, and lifecycle management of Microsoft SQL Server platforms (on-prem and cloud-hosted), including standards, reference architectures, and technical roadmaps aligned to business needs
• Engineer and operate high availability and disaster recovery solutions (e.g., Always On Availability Groups, failover clustering, log shipping, replication), including backup and restore strategy, RPO/RTO definition, and routine disaster recovery testing
• Perform core database administration functions, including regular backups, restores, recovery validation, integrity checks, patching, and ongoing maintenance to ensure system reliability and data protection
• Lead database performance engineering efforts, including SQL query tuning, execution plan analysis, indexing strategy, and statistics maintenance; establish performance baselines, capacity planning, and service level objectives.
• Implement and enforce database security controls, including least-privilege access, auditing, encryption, and secure configuration standards; partner with Infrastructure and Security teams on vulnerability remediation and compliance requirements
• Design, build, and maintain data integration pipelines and reporting workflows (e.g., SSIS, SQL Agent jobs, stored procedures, ETL/ELT frameworks); manage scheduling, error handling, data lineage, and operational support for data refresh processes.
• Develop and support data exchange mechanisms between systems, including APIs, file-based integrations, and cross-platform data movement across operational databases and data warehouse/lake environments
• Build automation to improve reliability and reduce operational overhead (patching, maintenance jobs, provisioning, deployments), leveraging scripting and repeatable processes; maintain runbooks and operational documentation
• Oversee and coordinate third-party database administration vendors and managed service providers, including defining scope, reviewing deliverables, managing SLAs, enforcing change control, and ensuring secure and compliant access.
• Establish observability for database and pipeline health (monitoring, alerting, dashboards); participate in incident response/on-call, perform root-cause analysis, and drive corrective and preventive actions
• Partner with application engineering, BI/reporting, and operational teams to review database designs, optimize data access patterns, support releases, and resolve production issues
• Provide technical leadership through code reviews and database design reviews; mentor team members and promote best practices across schema design, data modeling, and database change management

Knowledge and Skills

• Advanced expertise in Microsoft SQL Server, including T-SQL development and performance tuning.
• Strong experience with database administration tasks, including backups, restores, recovery models, and maintenance planning
• Strong experience writing and optimizing complex SQL queries
• Hands-on experience with ETL/ELT development (SSIS or similar tools).
• Proficiency in scripting for automation (SQL (T-SQL, PL/SQL), Python, PowerShell, Bash/Shell scripting, Java or Scala (especially for big data platforms), Spark/PySpark, JSON/XML data handling)
• Experience working with modern data platforms such as Snowflake or other data warehouse/data lake technologies
• Deep understanding of high availability and disaster recovery solutions (Always On, replication, clustering, log shipping)
• Strong knowledge of database design, normalization, indexing, and data modeling principles
• Experience with database monitoring, troubleshooting, and performance optimization
• Experience supporting data integration and data exchange across multiple systems
• Self-starter with ability to balance multiple projects with aggressive deadlines and strong attention to detail.

Education and/or Experience
Bachelor's degree in computer science, Information Systems, or related field preferred; equivalent experience considered
Language Skills
Ability to read and comprehend simple instructions, short correspondence, and memos. Ability to write simple correspondence. Ability to effectively present information in one-on-one and small group situations to customers, clients, and other employees of the organization.
Mathematical Skills
Ability to add, subtract, multiply, and divide in all units of measure, using whole numbers, common fractions, and decimals. Ability to compute rate, ratio, and percent and to draw and interpret bar graphs.
Reasoning Ability
Ability to apply common sense understanding to carry out detailed instructions. Ability to deal with problems involving a few concrete variables in standardized situations.
Computer Skills
Advanced knowledge of Microsoft Office applications (Word, Excel, Outlook, etc).
Benefits
Our benefit offerings include: Medical, dental, vision, wellness programs, EAP counseling services, FSA & HSA, company sponsored life insurance for employee, voluntary life insurance for employee, spouse and child, AD&D Insurance, voluntary short-term and long-term disability, critical illness insurance, accident insurance, legal assistance, pet insurance, living will and trust preparation discounts, commuter program, annual walking challenge, employee appreciation events and monthly sales awards.
At Acra Lending, we were founded with a clear purpose: to specialize in alternative income loan products that help borrowers qualify for our flexible loan programs. We operate in 39 States, out of nine offices in Arizona, California, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Missouri, Nevada, Texas, and Utah along with a growing team of remote professionals across the country. Throughout the mortgage industry, Acra Lending is widely known for responsible lending practices, product innovation and operational efficiency. The foundation of our Company is built on helping our customers by providing Non-QM mortgage solutions for today's borrower in residential and commercial properties across America.
Our Leadership team will encourage you to grow, make time to have fun, and work together to make great things happen. We embrace the strengths and values of each team member. We believe in having diverse perspectives where everyone is included, to serve customers from all walks of life. We reward our employees with a competitive salary and a variety of benefits to help our team members reach their health, retirement, and professional goals along with an exceptional 401k match program. We look forward to meeting you!