Principal Database Engineer – SQL Server & AI Data Infrastructure

This position is listed on behalf of a partner company, who manages all applications and next steps. Our partner is looking for a Principal Database Engineer – SQL Server & AI Data Infrastructure based in United States. The Principal Database Engineer will help modernize and scale enterprise data platforms that support critical business applications and next-generation AI capabilities. This is a deeply technical, hands-on role focused on SQL Server, T-SQL, database performance, scalability, and modernization. You will work with high-volume environments containing complex data relationships and business-critical workloads. The role combines traditional database engineering expertise with cloud data platforms, automation, event-driven architectures, and AI-enabled engineering practices. You will partner across application engineering, SRE, operations, architecture, and AI/ML teams while independently driving complex initiatives from design through production. This is an opportunity to remain highly technical while having Senior Staff-level ownership and influence over the evolution of modern data infrastructure.

Accountabilities

• Design, develop, optimize, and modernize large-scale SQL Server databases and data platforms, with a strong focus on scalability, maintainability, reliability, and long-term technical health.
• Analyze and refactor complex T-SQL, stored procedures, functions, and database logic while identifying opportunities to simplify and improve legacy systems.
• Diagnose and resolve database performance challenges through execution-plan analysis, indexing strategies, query optimization, database tuning, and detailed analysis of database internals.
• Drive schema modernization and migration initiatives, developing automation and implementation strategies that protect data integrity and minimize disruption to business-critical systems.
• Engineer replication, synchronization, data integration, and data movement patterns across transactional and analytical environments, including SQL Server, PostgreSQL, Snowflake, and cloud data services.
• Design and support high-volume OLTP and OLAP environments while applying strong knowledge of indexing, locking, transactions, isolation levels, concurrency, and query optimization.
• Implement event-driven database patterns such as Change Data Capture, outbox patterns, and event publishing to support modern distributed architectures.
• Apply AI coding assistants and emerging AI technologies to accelerate development, debugging, documentation, modernization, and database engineering workflows.
• Contribute to AI-enabled data infrastructure, including embedding pipelines, vector databases, semantic search, retrieval systems, and data capabilities supporting AI applications and agentic workflows.
• Independently lead complex database engineering initiatives from problem definition through design, implementation, deployment, and production adoption.
• Serve as a technical authority for complex database and performance challenges, providing guidance through design reviews, code reviews, engineering standards, and technical decision-making.
• Mentor other engineers and contribute to the development of scalable database engineering practices, standards, tooling, and automation.
• Investigate high-impact production incidents using database metrics, logs, CPU and memory utilization, execution plans, and observability data, driving root-cause analysis and durable corrective actions.
• Collaborate closely with application engineering, SRE, operations, architecture, data engineering, and AI/ML teams to ensure reliable delivery and continuous improvement of critical data platforms.

Requirements

• 15+ years of experience in database engineering, data platform engineering, software engineering, or a related technical discipline, with substantial experience operating at enterprise scale.
• Deep hands-on expertise with Microsoft SQL Server and T-SQL, including complex stored procedures, execution-plan analysis, indexing, query optimization, database tuning, and performance troubleshooting.
• Demonstrated experience modernizing, refactoring, or transforming legacy database environments rather than simply maintaining existing systems.
• Strong experience supporting large-scale, high-volume, business-critical databases and applications where reliability, performance, and data integrity are essential.
• Strong programming skills in Python, C#, or a comparable language…