Cassandra Database Engineer

Cassandra DBA / Engineer Key Requirements

Location: Phoenix, AZ (Locals, In - person Interview)

Database Architecture

• Design and manage highly available, scalable Cassandra clusters.
• Strong understanding of Cassandra architecture, replication, consistency levels, partitioning, data modeling, and multi-DC deployments.
• Capacity planning and cluster topology design.

Cassandra Performance Tuning

• Analyze and optimize read/write performance and latency.
• Tune compaction, caching, consistency levels, tombstones, SSTables, and Cassandra configuration.
• Identify hot partitions, slow queries, and resource bottlenecks.

Node Expansion & Cluster Management

• Add, replace, remove, and decommission Cassandra nodes safely.
• Perform cluster expansion and capacity upgrades with minimal production impact.
• Manage token distribution, bootstrap/streaming, repair, cleanup, and cluster rebalancing.

Backup & Recovery

• Implement and maintain Cassandra backup and restore strategies.
• Perform snapshots, incremental backups, and point-in-time recovery where supported by the backup solution.
• Conduct recovery testing and support disaster-recovery procedures.

JVM & System Tuning

• Tune Cassandra JVM heap, garbage collection, and memory settings.
• Troubleshoot pauses, heap pressure, CPU, disk I/O, and memory issues.
• Tune Linux/OS and storage configurations for Cassandra workloads.

Monitoring & Troubleshooting

• Monitor cluster health, availability, latency, throughput, disk usage, compactions, dropped messages, and repairs.
• Troubleshoot production issues including node failures, high latency, timeouts, replica inconsistencies, and capacity problems.
• Strong experience with nodetool, Cassandra logs, metrics, tracing, and monitoring/alerting platforms.