Database Performance and Bug Detective

Percona is a globally recognized thought leader in the open source database community. We deliver expert services and professional software for the MySQL, MongoDB, PostgreSQL, and MariaDB databases to users worldwide.

Percona Support is a globally distributed team that solves highly complex problems in demanding, mission-critical environments, helping our enterprise customers get more out of their database deployments both on-premise and in the cloud.

We are looking for a code detective to join our team, bringing source code-level familiarity with our supported database technologies to diagnose performance problems and bugs via core dump and stack trace analysis, CPU profiling, and identifying bugs and behaviors through deep understanding of product internals.

Although the primary focus of this role is working with other members of the Percona Support team, this is a technical support role and not a software development role. Occasional customer interaction to gather diagnostic information may be necessary.

This is a challenging and career-defining role: you will work with the internals of open source databases that have been under development for decades, along with additional software from their surrounding ecosystems.

If you love solving complex customer problems that will push you to always be learning, and you love the idea of helping your team deepen their own understanding through the creation of architecture and process diagrams, knowledge base articles, and blogs, we’d love to hear from you.

What You Will Do:

• Diagnose and troubleshoot problems via stack traces, core dumps, CPU performance profiles

• Explain unexpected behaviors and performance regressions through C++ source code analysis

• Perform root cause analysis for software crashes and failures

• Assist with bug verification and analysis

• Help the Support team “level up” by creating knowledge resources based on product internals

• Engage with customers and the community as needed to gather information

What You Have Done:

• 3+ years of software development experience with C++

• You should feel comfortable reading and understanding the source code for MySQL, MongoDB, and PostgreSQL

• Experience using the gdb debugger and analysis of core dumps generated on Linux

• Familiarity with using rr to capture and replay debugging sessions

• Good knowledge of Linux and common tools within its ecosystem, including gdb, rr, valgrind, strace, perf, the /proc filesystem, and similar software

• Experience designing and implementing test cases, with particular emphasis on database benchmarking tools such as sysbench, mysqlslap, and YCSB

• Demonstrated good written and verbal English communication skills

• Use of Jira or similar bug-tracking systems

What Will Make You Stand Out

• Solid understanding of systems performance tuning

• Prior familiarity with the source code of MySQL, MongoDB, or PostgreSQL

• Prior experience delivering technical support for highly complex problem spaces

• Prior experience developing software that used one or more of our supported databases as the backend

• Prior DBA-level experience with one or more of our supported database technologies

• Experience with other server-side programming languages used by our own software and by customers, including specifically Go/Golang and Python. Java, bash/zsh scripting, and others are also a plus.

• Prior experience using Percona software

Why Percona?

At Percona, we believe an open world is a better world. Our mission is to enable everyone to innovate freely, by providing the best open source database software, support, and services. We make databases and applications run better through a unique combination of expertise and open source software built with the community for you. Our technical teams are experts in MySQL, MongoDB, PostgreSQL, and MariaDB.

Percona is proud to be a remote-only and globally dispersed workforce – we have colleagues in more than 50 countries! We offer a collaborative, highly-engaged culture where your ideas are welcome and your voice is heard.

Our staff receives generous benefits including flexible work hours and various paid time off programs, all your equipment for your remote office, funds for career development (external training, certifications, conferences), ongoing connectivity allowances, and the opportunity to participate in our equity incentive plan.

If you love the idea of working with a high-growth tech company that is one of the best in the business and known globally as a leader in the open-source database space, let’s talk!