Database Developer Senior/Expert

CompanyFederal Reserve Bank of Cleveland

The Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland’s mission is to foster the stability, integrity, and efficiency of the nation’s monetary, financial, and payment systems while representing the Fourth District perspectives.
As part of the nation’s central bank, we are a team of mission-driven professionals who are committed to serving with excellence. Our core values are: Build Trust Every Day, Own Our Actions, Collaborate with Intention, and Be Open to Change.
For twenty-six years in a row, we’ve been named “One of Northeast Ohio’s Best Places to Work” by North Coast 99. This prestigious award honors organizations with outstanding employment practices, including compensation, benefits, training, recruitment, retention, community services, and employee communications.
Follow us on LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, and our YouTube channel – Cleveland Fed

To be considered for this role, candidates must be a U.S. citizen.

This role provides expert-level analysis, design, development, maintenance, and support of the most complex database and data‑platform solutions across the enterprise. Operates as a hands-on technical authority in data architecture, advanced SQL and procedural logic, performance engineering, and secure, resilient data operations. Solves technical issues of highest complexity and strategic importance while providing thought leadership on database standards, patterns, and tooling. Partners across product, platform, and security teams to design elegant, scalable data solutions aligned to business strategy.

Essential Responsibilities

• Operates autonomously in the most complex environments; typically works under ambiguity where standard procedures are not applicable. Exercises considerable latitude in determining approaches and technical objectives; completed work is reviewed from a long‑term perspective for desired results.
• Analyze the most complex customer and enterprise needs to recommend, design, and implement elegant data solutions (OLTP, OLAP, streaming, and hybrid) aligned to architecture guardrails.
• Design and engineer the most complex database structures, procedural logic, and SQL (DDL/DML), including advanced indexing strategies, partitioning, compression, and query optimization; lead root‑cause analyses for performance and concurrency issues.
• Establish and evolve patterns for data modeling (3NF, dimensional, data vault), data migration, and large‑scale modernization efforts including zero‑downtime strategies.
• Lead implementation of emerging database and data‑platform tools (e.g., declarative IaC for data, secrets management, data quality engines) and drive adoption across teams.
• Partner with Security, Risk, and Compliance teams to ensure alignment with Federal Reserve System controls, including privacy, audit, resiliency, and data‑governance requirements.
• Provide deep technical coaching through peer review, pair programming, and internal knowledge‑sharing forums; support multiple teams during complex initiatives.
• Actively participate in Agile ceremonies; influence backlog prioritization for architectural improvements and technical debt reduction.
• Provide second‑line production support and resolve the most complex issues across multiple environments; develop SRE‑aligned observability practices for database tiers.
• Promote innovation by identifying strategic opportunities, advocating for modern data capabilities, and performing leading‑edge evaluation of emerging tools and techniques.

Knowledge & Skills

• Expert knowledge of software development and data engineering processes, practices, and tools, including Agile methods and work‑management systems (Azure DevOps, Jira).
• Ability to analyze the most complex business requirements and data processes and clearly communicate solution recommendations to stakeholders.
• Ability to perform enterprise‑scale independent research and resolve any technical barriers across platforms and services.
• Expert understanding of database internals (storage engine behavior, transaction isolation, concurrency control, query execution), distributed data systems, and modern cloud data services.
• Provides thought leadership and contributes to System‑wide practice improvements in data strategy, architecture, and governance.

Skills Areas – Expert Level

 

• Expert programming skills in SQL and procedural languages (T‑SQL, PL/SQL) and advanced performance engineering (execution plans, statistics, indexing).
• Expert skills in CI/CD for database changes and Infrastructure as Code for data platforms; advanced automation around schema validation, migration, and compliance.
• Expert skills in data modeling (relational, dimensional, vault), data quality frameworks, lineage, metadata management, and database observability.
• Demonstrated experience mentoring developers; leads design reviews, sets engineering standards, and ensures consistent implementation across teams.
• Expert skills working with enterprise RDBMS and/or cloud‑based data services (e.g., SQL Server, Oracle, PostgreSQL, Aurora/RDS, Snowflake/BigQuery, Kafka‑based streaming systems). 

Education & Experience

Database Developer Expert

• Bachelor’s degree and 10 years of related work experience OR  

• Master’s degree and 7 years of related work experience

Database Developer Senior

• Bachelor’s degree and 5+ years of professional work experience or

• Two years of college or database development bootcamp certificate and 7+ years of professional work experience

Database Developer

• Bachelor’s degree and 3+ years of professional work experience

• Two years of college or database development bootcamp certificate and 5+ years of professional work experience or

Database Developer Associate

• Bachelor’s degree and 3+ years of professional work experience

• Two years of college or database development bootcamp certificate and 5+ years of professional work experience or

Location: Cleveland, OH, Columbus, OH, Cincinnati, OH, or Pittsburgh, PA

The expected starting salary range for the Database Developer Expert is $137,000 and 188,400, for the Database Developer Senior is between ​$111,400 and $153,100 annually, for the Database Developer is between $90,500 and $124,400 annually and for the Database Developer Associate is between $66,100 and $90,900 annually. Final salary and offer will be determined by the applicant’s background, experience, skills, internal equity, and market data.

The Cleveland Fed offers benefits to support overall health and financial security. Learn more about our benefits here: https://www.clevelandfed.org/careers

Physical Demands and General Working Conditions            

This is not necessarily an exhaustive list of all responsibilities, duties, standards or requirements, efforts, skills or working conditions associated with the job. While this is intended to be an accurate reflection of the current job, the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland reserves the right to revise this or any job description at any time. 

Reasonable Accommodation Statement - The Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland is committed to ensuring that individuals with disabilities are provided with reasonable accommodation to participate in the job application or interview process, perform essential job functions, and receive other benefits and privileges of employment. To request a reasonable accommodation for any part of the employment process, please send an email to [email protected].

Bank’s Ethics Rules and Drug Testing:

As a condition of employment, Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland employees must comply with the Bank’s ethics rules which generally prohibit employees, their spouses/domestic partners, and minor children from owning or controlling, directly or indirectly, any debt or equity interest in a depository institution or an affiliate of a depository institution. A "depository institution" means a bank, a trust company, or any institution that accepts deposits, including a bank chartered under the laws of a foreign country. In addition, employees (and their spouses/domestic partners, and minor children) may not own shares of mutual funds, unit investment trusts or ETFs that have a policy, as stated in the prospectus, of concentrating in the financial services industry and that have underlying investments in banks or other depository institutions.  If you or your spouse/domestic partner or minor child own such securities and would not be willing or able to divest them if you accepted an offer of Bank employment, you should raise this issue with the recruiter for this posting.

In addition, as a condition of employment, candidates must undergo a background check and will be tested for all controlled substances prohibited by federal law, to include marijuana, prior to hire and for certain safety sensitive positions during employment.  

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Always verify and apply to jobs on Federal Reserve System Careers or through verified Federal Reserve Bank social media channels

Full Time / Part TimeFull time

Regular / TemporaryRegular

Job Exempt (Yes / No)Yes

Job CategoryData Analytics Family Group

Work ShiftFirst (United States of America)

The Federal Reserve Banks are committed to equal employment opportunity for employees and job applicants in compliance with applicable law and to an environment where employees are valued for their differences.

Always verify and apply to jobs on Federal Reserve System Careers (https://rb.wd5.myworkdayjobs.com/FRS) or through verified Federal Reserve Bank social media channels.

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