Senior Database Engineer at Manulife in Waterloo

Senior Database Engineer

Location: Waterloo, Ontario

Manulife is seeking a highly skilled Senior Database Engineer to define architecture standards and design, automate, and operate enterprise-scale database platforms supporting critical applications across Enterprise Technology Services (ETS). The role focuses on reliability, performance, resiliency, security, and operational excellence across cloud and hybrid environments.

Distinct from traditional Database Administration and Data Engineering, this role develops and evolves database platform capabilities, standards, automation, and engineering practices.

Partnering with application, cloud infrastructure, platform engineering, and security teams, you will deliver scalable, secure, highly available, observable, and cost-efficient database services. This is an opportunity to shape enterprise database strategy, advance modernization, and deliver engineering-led solutions for business-critical platforms at scale.

Position Responsibilities

• Database Platform Engineering: Design, build, and maintain enterprise database platforms across cloud and hybrid environments.

• Define and implement database standards, architecture patterns, and engineering best practices.

• Lead database technology evaluations and recommend platform solutions aligned with business requirements.

• Develop and maintain database roadmaps supporting modernization and cloud transformation initiatives.

• Support relational and NoSQL database technologies including PostgreSQL, SQL Server, MySQL, Oracle, MongoDB, Cosmos DB, and Redis.

• Reliability, Availability, and Resilience: Design and implement high availability, disaster recovery, backup, and failover solutions.

• Establish Recovery Time Objectives (RTO) and Recovery Point Objectives (RPO) for critical database systems.

• Perform disaster recovery testing and resilience assessments.

• Drive service reliability improvements through automation and operational excellence initiatives.

• Performance Engineering: Identify performance bottlenecks and implement tuning recommendations.

• Analyze workload patterns, query performance, storage utilization, memory consumption, and database resource contention.

• Conduct capacity planning and growth forecasting.

• Develop proactive performance engineering frameworks to predict and prevent service degradation.

• Operational Excellence: Participate in incident response, root cause analysis, and problem management activities.

• Lead major incident investigations involving database platforms.

• Develop runbooks, operational procedures, and knowledge base documentation.

• Mentor junior engineers and provide technical leadership across database engineering initiatives.

Required Qualifications

• 7+ years of experience in Database Engineering, Database Administration, Platform Engineering, or related technical roles.

• Strong expertise in one or more enterprise database technologies, including PostgreSQL, Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle, MySQL, MongoDB, or Cosmos DB.

• Experience designing and implementing high-availability and disaster recovery architectures.

• Advanced SQL and database performance tuning expertise.

• Experience operating and managing databases within Azure and/or AWS cloud environments.

• Experience supporting containerized platforms, including Kubernetes.

• Experience developing automation solutions using Python, PowerShell, Bash, or similar scripting languages.

• Experience implementing Infrastructure as Code using Terraform or equivalent technologies.

• Strong troubleshooting, analytical, and root cause analysis skills.

• Experience working within enterprise-scale production environments supporting mission-critical applications.

Preferred Qualifications

• Azure and/or AWS cloud certifications.

• Database certifications such as PostgreSQL, Oracle, SQL Server, or MongoDB.

• Experience driving FinOps initiatives and database cost optimization strategies.

• Experience with predictive analytics, machine learning, or capacity management solutions.

• Experience supporting large-scale financial services, insurance, or regulated environments.

• Experience with database observability, monitoring, and performance management platforms.

• Experience supporting cloud-native database services and modern data platform architectures.

• Knowledge of Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) principles and operational excellence practices.

• Strong communication and stakeholder management skills with the ability to influence technical and business partners.

When You Join Our Team

• We'll empower you to learn and grow the career you want.

• We'll recognize and support you in a flexible environment where well-being and inclusion are more than just words.

• As part of our global team, we'll support you in shaping the future you want to see.

The role being advertised is an existing vacancy.

About Manulife and John Hancock

Manulife Financial Corporation is a leading international financial services provider, helping people make their decisions easier and lives better. To learn more about us, visit https://www.manulife.com/en/about/our-story.html.

Manulife is an Equal Opportunity Employer

At Manulife/John Hancock, we embrace our diversity. We strive to attract, develop and retain a workforce that is as diverse as the customers we serve and to foster an inclusive work environment that embraces the strength of cultures and individuals. We are committed to fair recruitment, retention, advancement and compensation, and we administer all of our practices and programs without discrimination on the basis of race, ancestry, place of origin, colour, ethnic origin, citizenship, religion or religious beliefs, creed, sex (including pregnancy and pregnancy-related conditions), sexual orientation, genetic characteristics, veteran status, gender identity, gender expression, age, marital status, family status, disability, or any other ground protected by applicable law.

It is our priority to remove barriers to provide equal access to employment. A Human Resources representative will work with applicants who request a reasonable accommodation during the application process. All information shared during the accommodation request process will be stored and used in a manner that is consistent with applicable laws and Manulife/John Hancock policies. To request a reasonable accommodation in the application process, contact hr@manulife.com.

Referenced Salary Location

Waterloo, OntarioHybrid

Salary range is expected to be between

$113,000.00 CAD - $163,000.00 CAD

Employees also have the opportunity to participate in incentive programs and earn incentive compensation tied to business and individual performance. The actual salary will vary depending on local market conditions, geography and relevant job-related factors such as knowledge, skills, qualifications, experience, and education/training. If you are applying for this role outside of the primary location, please contact hr@manulife.com for the salary range for your location.

Manulife offers eligible employees a wide array of customizable benefits, including health, dental, mental health, vision, short- and long-term disability, life and AD&D insurance coverage, adoption/surrogacy and wellness benefits, and employee/family assistance plans. We also offer eligible employees various retirement savings plans (including pension and a global share ownership plan with employer matching contributions) and financial education and counseling resources. Our generous paid time off program in Canada includes holidays, vacation, personal, and sick days, and we offer the full range of statutory leaves of absence. If you are applying for this role in the U.S., please contact hr@manulife.com for more information about U.S.-specific paid time off provisions.

We use data and analytics technologies, such as artificial intelligence (AI), and automated processing tools, to analyze and process the information you provide to us or third parties in the application process. For more information, please refer to our personal information collection statement.