We’re building the next generation of employee benefits infrastructure. At Happl, we help global teams design, manage, and scale benefits that actually work for their people by using AI, across flex allowances, benefits, insurance, recognition and wellbeing, all in one intelligent platform.
Happl is backed by leading investors such as YCombinator, 6Degrees Capital and more, known for backing companies such as Deel, Rippling, Airbnb, Coinbase, Dropbox, and most recently was awarded a place in the UK’s top 100 startups for 2026.
About The Role
As a Database Administrator at Happl, your mission is to design, manage and scale the data infrastructure powering a global AI‑first benefits platform. You’ll own the reliability, performance and integrity of our databases, ensuring our platform can scale securely as we grow globally. This role is critical to supporting payments, benefits, reporting and real‑time product experiences used by companies and employees worldwide. It is a hands‑on role for someone who thrives in high‑growth environments and wants ownership over core infrastructure that underpins the entire platform.
What You’ll Be Doing
* Own and manage production databases (primarily PostgreSQL)
* Ensure high availability, performance and reliability of our database systems
* Monitor database health, performance and capacity, proactively resolving issues
* Optimise queries, indexes and schema design to support product performance at scale
* Implement backup, recovery and disaster recovery strategies
* Design and maintain secure access controls and data protection measures
* Support engineers with schema design, migrations and query optimisation
* Improve database observability, tooling and operational workflows
* Support integrations, reporting and data pipelines across internal and external systems
* Help define best practices for data management as we scale globally
What We’re Looking For
* 5+ years of experience managing production databases as a DBA, Database Engineer or Backend Engineer
* Strong experience with PostgreSQL in production environments
* Deep understanding of database performance tuning, indexing and query optimisation
* Experience with backups, replication and disaster recovery strategies
* Strong understanding of data integrity, security and access control
* Experience working with cloud infrastructure (AWS, GCP or similar)
* Comfortable supporting engineering teams and improving database architecture
* Experience with monitoring and observability tools
* Strong ownership mindset and ability to operate independently
* Clear communicator who works well across engineering and product teams
If you don’t meet every requirement but feel this role fits your trajectory, we’d still love to hear from you.
Why join Happl
* Help shape the future of employee benefits
* Competitive base salary and commission
* Meaningful equity in an early‑stage growing business
* Flexible hybrid working from day one
* Access to your own Happl benefits platform
* Optional enrolment in Private Health Insurance
* Optional enrolment in Dental insurance, including family cover
* A flexible Wellbeing budget to spend on whatever wellbeing means to you
* Learning & Development allowance
* Pension scheme from day one
About The Interview
* Call 1: 20‑min Intro call with Ben (COO & CoS)
* Call 2: 30‑min deep dive with Lee (Head of Engineering)
* Short Task
* Call 3: 30‑min deep dive with Ben T (CEO & Founder)
Additional Details
Location: London, Waterloo
Team: Engineering
Working arrangement: Hybrid (1+ Days in Office)
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