Senior Database Performance Engineer - Remote

Job Description

Job Description

Company Description

At PayNearMe, we’re on a mission to make paying and getting paid as simple as possible. We build innovative technology that transforms the way businesses and their customers experience payments. Our industry-leading platform, PayXM™, is the first of its kind—designed to manage the entire payment experience from start to finish. Every click, swipe or tap is seamless, fast and secure, helping non-commerce businesses boost customer satisfaction, accelerate payments, and reduce costs.

Our single platform handles it all : cards, ACH, digital wallets such as PayPal, Venmo, Cash App Pay, Apple Pay and Google Pay, and even cash at more than 62,000 retail locations nationwide. Today, thousands of businesses across consumer lending, iGaming and online sports betting, property management, and tolling trust PayNearMe to deliver a payment experience that drives real results.

In September 2025, we raised a $50 million Series E funding round to accelerate our growth.

We’re a team of 200+ employees across 41 states, headquartered in Silicon Valley with satellite offices in Dallas, TX and Holmdel, NJ.

Join us and be part of a team that’s shaping the future of payments—one experience at a time.

Job Description

The Performance and Scale team ensures our systems remain fast, reliable, and efficient as we grow. We’re looking for a Sr. Database Performance Engineer to identify and fix slow MySQL queries across our Rails monolith, improving application responsiveness and overall system performance. In this role, you’ll take ownership of known database performance issues, use Datadog and other profiling tools to uncover high-impact optimization opportunities, and address underlying inefficiencies in query patterns or application logic. Over time, this position will expand to include performance and scalability work across other data systems such as TiDB, Elasticache, and Opensearch—directly improving user experience, enabling infrastructure efficiency, and reducing operational costs.

We're looking for someone who has built highly performant OLTP systems, who fully understands the importance and impact of efficient MySQL at scale, and who knows how to identify and focus on the areas that will have the most impact. You should be a Rails wizard who understands all the subtleties of generating performant MySQL using ActiveRecord. You should have a passion for database efficiency!

Responsibilities

• Work hands-on to identify, analyze, and resolve slow ActiveRecord queries across the Rails monolith
• Optimize query performance through indexing, query rewriting, and schema improvements
• Collaborate with DBAs and other technical teams to diagnose and remediate database bottlenecks
• Validate all performance improvements through testing, and performance measurement at high load
• Use Datadog to analyze query performance and identify high-impact optimization opportunities
• Implement selective caching in Redis where appropriate to reduce database load
• Document findings and share best practices for performant query design
• Contribute to long-term performance and scalability efforts across MySQL, TiDB, Elasticache, and Opensearch

Qualifications

Preferred Qualifications

What Success Looks Like

Additional Information

Location :  Flexible / Remote (within the US)

Great compensation package plus extensive benefits, including :

Salary Range : $175,000 - 190,000

PayNearMe strives to create a workplace where all employees thrive. Our core values represent who we are today and we take pride in the way we work with each other as well as with our stakeholders.

We’re in this  together  to  do the right thing . We deliver  real results  we are proud of while remaining  respectful ,  transparent , and  flexible .

PayNearMe is an equal opportunity employer. We are diligently and thoughtfully working towards cultivating a diverse workforce which in turn, enhances our products and services for the communities we serve. Applicants who represent all backgrounds are strongly encouraged to apply.

Candidate information will be treated in accordance with our job applicant privacy notice found at :   https : / / home.paynearme.com / ccpa -privacy-notice-jobs-employees /

Assistance for Disabled Applicants

Alternative formats of this Notice are available to individuals with a disability. Please let us know if you need assistance.

All your information will be kept confidential according to EEO guidelines.