--- title: 'Staff Database Reliability Engineer at Checkr' canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/staff-database-reliability-engineer-checkr-denver-342czysgncdz' type: 'job' last_seen: '2026-11-01' --- # Staff Database Reliability Engineer at Checkr - **Company:** Checkr - **Location:** Denver, CO / San Francisco, CA - **Compensation:** $165k–$229k - **Posted:** 2026-10-26 - **Last confirmed live:** 2026-11-01 - **Apply:** https://job-boards.greenhouse.io/checkr/jobs/8316758 ## Job description ## About Checkr Checkr is building the data platform to power safe and fair decisions. Over 140,000 companies and millions of people rely on Checkr for AI verification in the moments that matter most: getting a new job, a new place to live, a car ride, childcare, even a date. Customers include Uber, Pennymac, Airbnb, Doordash, and Anthropic. We’re a team that thrives on solving complex problems with innovative solutions that advance our mission. Checkr is recognized on [Forbes Cloud 100 2025 List](https://www.forbes.com/lists/cloud100/) and is a Y Combinator 2024 [Breakthrough Company](https://www.ycombinator.com/blog/yc-top-companies-2024). ## About the team/role Reporting to the Manager, DevOps Engineering, you will lead the architecture, reliability, and operational excellence of Checkr’s core data stores. Checkr offers fantastic AI enablement, and you'll use AI tooling throughout your day-to-day.  In this role, you will own database capacity planning, financial forecasting, high availability, disaster recovery, and infrastructure-as-code automation across high-scale distributed data stores. Partnering closely with Infrastructure, Site Reliability Engineering, Core Services, and Product Engineering teams, you will establish fleet-wide data governance and performance standards that power Checkr's continuous platform growth. ## What you'll do - Lead and execute the architectural design, high availability strategies including multi-region, and business continuity/disaster recovery (BCDR) solutions across Checkr’s multi-cloud database fleet. - Inspire and drive high standards across the team by mentoring and growing engineers. - Drive the long-term vision and strategy of database architecture at Checkr; communicate that strategy in a way that resonates with engineers and upper leadership, and propose projects that move the company towards that vision - Ensure the security of highly sensitive data through encryption and security-first architecture - Provision, scale, and maintain cloud database systems across production, staging, and sandbox environments using Infrastructure as Code (Terraform, Terragrunt). - Optimize database performance at the query, schema, connection, and instance levels across PostgreSQL or MySQL, and MongoDB workloads. - Partner with Site Reliability Engineering to build proactive observability, automated alerting, and diagnostic tooling for database health and performance metrics. - Automate operational toil, maintenance workflows, schema migrations, and backup lifecycle policies to improve reliability and engineering velocity. - Lead incident diagnosis, resolution, and post-incident reviews for critical database alerts and outages across customer-serving infrastructure. ## What you bring - A Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or a related technical field (or equivalent practical experience) - 10+ years of experience designing, administering, and scaling relational and non-relational database storage architectures in production environments. - Deep expertise managing and tuning MongoDB and PostgreSQL or MySQL database topologies at high volume and scale. - Understanding of software engineering fundamentals, including data structures and software design principles, and the ability to apply them to solve technical challenges. - Extensive hands-on experience with AWS database and storage ecosystems, including RDS, Aurora, ElastiCache, MongoDB Atlas, and S3. - Demonstrated track record of automating cloud infrastructure and database operations using Terraform, Terragrunt, and modern scripting languages. - Strong technical leadership skills with a proven ability to guide engineering teams through database schema design, zero-downtime migrations (e.g., gh-ost), and security compliance standards. - An A-player mindset with a strong bias for action: you raise the bar, move with urgency, stay resilient through ambiguity, and take ownership to deliver meaningful outcomes. ## #LI-TD1 Pay Transparency Disclosure We use geographic cost of labor as an input to develop ranges for our roles and as such, each location where we hire may have a different range. If this role is remote, we have listed the top to the bottom of the possible range, but we will specify the target range for an exact location when you are selected for a recruiting discussion. For more information on our compensation philosophy, see[our website](https://checkr.com/company/careers). On-target Earnings OR Base Salary range (San Francisco, CA) $195,000—$229,000 USD On-target Earnings OR Base Salary range (Denver, CO) $165,000—$194,000 USD ## What We Offer - A fast-paced and collaborative environment - Learning and development allowance - Competitive cash and equity compensation, and opportunity for advancement - 100% medical, dental, and vision coverage - Up to $25K reimbursement for fertility, adoption, and parental planning services - Flexible PTO policy - Monthly wellness stipend At Checkr, we believe an in office work environment strengthens collaboration, drives innovation, and encourages connection. Our hub locations are Denver, CO; San Francisco, CA; Nashville, TN; and Santiago, Chile. Individuals are expected to work from the office 3+ days a week. In-office perks are provided, such as lunch five times a week, a commuter stipend, and an abundance of snacks and beverages. A relocation stipend may be available for those willing to relocate to a Checkr hub location. ## Equal Employment Opportunities at Checkr Checkr is committed to building the best product and company, which requires hiring talented and qualified individuals with a diverse set of perspectives and lived experiences. Checkr believes in hiring people of all backgrounds, including those whose histories are impacted by the justice system in accordance with local, state, and/or federal laws, including the [San Francisco’s Fair Chance Ordinance](https://www.sf.gov/worker-rights-san-francisco). Applicant Privacy Policy If you are a California resident or are located in Alberta or British Columbia, our [Applicant Privacy Policy](https://checkr.com/legal/applicant-privacy-policy) applies to our collection and processing of your personal information when you apply for a role with us or otherwise participate in our recruitment process. For applicants in Massachusetts: It is unlawful in Massachusetts to require or administer a lie detector test as a condition of employment or continued employment. An employer who violates this law shall be subject to criminal penalties and civil liability. *Legitimate Checkr emails will always include our official domain name after the @ symbol (e.g., name@checkr.com or name@ext.checkr.com). ## About Checkr ## Company Overview - **One-liner**: Checkr is an AI-native trust and verification platform that powers safe and fair decisions for identity, background, employment, and credential verification. - **Entity Type**: Private (Series E) - **Headquarters**: San Francisco, California, United States - **Founded**: 2014 - **Founders**: Daniel Yanisse, Jonathan Perichon ## Core Business - **Primary industry/industries**: Background checks, identity verification, fraud prevention, trust and safety, HR tech, tenant screening, mortgage verification - **Target customers**: B2B — serving over 140,000 customers across all industries and sizes, including enterprises for hiring, lenders for mortgage/income verification, property managers for tenant screening, and insurers for risk intelligence. - **Mission or purpose statement**: To power safe and fair decisions for high-stakes decisions, with a strong commitment to fair chance hiring and second chances. ## Products & Services - **Workforce (Background Checks & Verifications for Hiring)**: The core product for employment background checks, criminal screenings, and credential verification. - **Tenant**: Automated tenant screening for faster and fairer leasing decisions. - **Mortgage**: Income and employment verification for lenders. - **Trust**: Real-time risk intelligence to protect people and property. - **Personal**: Empowering individuals to own and share their verified identity and credentials. - **Checkr AI**: The underlying AI platform that transforms fragmented data into actionable insights, powered by the "People Data Graph" — a comprehensive identity map built from verified data linked across hundreds of millions of real identities. ## Market Standing - **Valuation**: $5 billion (Series E) - **Key Metric**: $500M+ annual revenue; highly profitable; 140,000+ customers; serves 100M+ people every year. - **Notable Investors/Partners**: Not explicitly listed in the provided sources, but known to include Accel, Y Combinator, and other top-tier VCs. - **Growth Signals**: Expanding beyond background checks into mortgage, tenant, and personal verification; strong AI-native positioning; 97% of customers report faster turnaround times than with previous vendors; three years on Built In's Best Places to Work. ## Competitive Advantages - **AI-Native Platform**: Checkr AI and the "People Data Graph" create a proprietary data moat that competitors cannot easily replicate, linking hundreds of millions of identities. - **Fair Chance Hiring Leadership**: A decade of advocacy and product design around fairness creates brand trust and differentiation, especially in regulated industries. - **Scale & Speed**: 140,000+ customers and 97% faster turnaround than previous vendors demonstrate operational excellence. - **Mission-Driven**: Commitment to Pledge 1% (product, equity, profits toward fair chance hiring) builds a strong employer brand and attracts talent who care about social impact. ## Strategic Focus - **AI & Automation**: Deep investment in AI across all teams and products — "Builders fluent in AI, curious about what's next" is a core hiring principle. - **Platform Expansion**: Moving from a single-use background check product to a multi-use trust platform (Workforce, Tenant, Mortgage, Trust, Personal). - **Talent Density**: Hiring strategy optimizes for "talent density" — every hire raises the average. This creates a high-performance culture. - **Fraud Prevention**: Addressing the growing fraud landscape with real-time risk intelligence. ## Why Work Here - **Culture**: High-performance, mission-driven, AI-native. The company explicitly states: "If you want a comfortable seat, you're in the wrong place." They hire for values, believing everything else is teachable. - **Remote/Hybrid/Office**: Hybrid with offices in San Francisco, Denver, Nashville, and Santiago, Chile. Many roles are remote within the US. - **Compensation & Benefits**: - 100% of medical, dental, and vision premiums covered for employees; majority for dependents. - Equity for every full-time employee ("Every full-time employee is an owner"). - $3,000/yr learning stipend. - 1-month paid sabbatical every 3 years. - Generous fully paid parental leave plus fertility, adoption, and surrogacy support. - Flexible time off. - 401(k) plan. - Wellness stipend (gym, fitness, etc.). - Commuter benefits (monthly stipend for transit/parking). - Mental health & coaching resources. - **Engineering Culture**: AI-native, high bar for talent. Engineering is the largest hiring department. Roles include Staff AI Engineer, Senior Software Engineer, AI Conversation Designer. - **Offer Acceptance Rate**: 81% from final round to offer; <48 hour response time from final round to offer — indicating a fast, efficient process. ## Sources 1. [checkr.com](https://checkr.com/company) 2. [checkr.com](https://checkr.com/company/careers) 3. [checkr.com](https://checkr.com/company/careers/open-careers) 4. [linkedin.com](https://www.linkedin.com/company/checkr-com) 5. [checkr.com](https://checkr.com/) ## Other roles at Checkr - [Workplace Operations Coordinator](https://feeny.ai/job/workplace-operations-coordinator-checkr-nashville-5kt2wfwvc94p) — Nashville, TN - [Customer Support Associate](https://feeny.ai/job/customer-support-associate-checkr-nashville-x452jwfbryph) — Nashville, TN - [Product Counsel](https://feeny.ai/job/product-counsel-checkr-san-francisco-4n59qnyr813j) — San Francisco, CA - [Staff Workday HRIS Technical Analyst](https://feeny.ai/job/staff-workday-hris-technical-analyst-checkr-san-francisco-esb2rvmqhdep) — San Francisco, CA - [Senior Software Engineer (Ruby/Rails), MVR](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-software-engineer-ruby-rails-mvr-checkr-san-francisco-c0tbyew3ryc1) — San Francisco, CA - [Senior Product Designer, Verifications](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-product-designer-verifications-checkr-denver-9mwdj2beapsn) — Denver, CO / San Francisco, CA - [Senior Machine Learning Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-machine-learning-engineer-checkr-denver-fta20jpz4dg8) — Denver, CO / San Francisco, CA - [Operations Process Design Specialist](https://feeny.ai/job/operations-process-design-specialist-checkr-nashville-y9ddbqdcgw9d) — Nashville, TN - [AV & Event Specialist II](https://feeny.ai/job/av-event-specialist-ii-checkr-san-francisco-nxwvansbntwa) — San Francisco, CA - [Director of Tax](https://feeny.ai/job/director-of-tax-checkr-san-francisco-5x7rg5nm8f80) — San Francisco, CA