5+ years of hands-on experience operating MariaDB or MySQL in high-volume production environments Strong understanding of high-availability architectures, replication, and distributed database behavior Experience with database proxies or load-balancing technologies such as HAProxy, ProxySQL, or similar Practical experience with CI/CD, GitOps, and infrastructure-as-code workflows, ideally using Terraform Solid Linux, cloud infrastructure, and networking fundamentals Experience building container images and operating workloads on Kubernetes at scale Strong security mindset around access control, upgrades, and operational safety Proven expertise in monitoring, alerting, and incident readiness Excellent communication and collaboration skills