Database Engineer - Formula1

At McLaren, our mission is to set the standard for high performance in sport. Everyone, in every part of the team, has a role to play. So if you want to test your ideas with the world watching... And measure your progress in milliseconds... And play your part in racing history... You belong here. High performance starts with you.

Purpose of the Role

We are looking for a database engineer who will help McLaren F1 build world championship data flows and applications. As a Database Engineer in McLaren F1, you will be an expert in one or more of the core technologies that we use to store, transform, and serve data to application clients, including SQL Server, MySQL, Postgres, and MongoDB, and will have practical experience of working with Kafka streaming infrastructure and Kubernetes. You will have experience of operating databases for scale and peak efficiency through tuning and optimization, will partner with platform engineering to ensure the highest standards of operational excellence for our database platforms including monitoring, alerting, and problem resolution, and will partner with engineering teams to design and implement data flows between systems.

Accountabilities and Responsibilities

• Design and optimise data processing pipelines for real-time analysis, enabling quick and effective decision-making.
• Implement tools and platforms for advanced data analysis, visualization, and reporting.
• Continuously monitor data systems and processes, identifying and implementing improvements to enhance efficiency, reduce latency, and support scaling efforts.
• Implement systems in line with best practices for HA and performance. Ensure compliance with data protection regulations and best practices to safeguard sensitive information.
• Work with software engineering team members to evaluate various database technology options and choose the right solution to solve a problem.
• Stay abreast of new developments, trends, and best practices in data management & engineering.
• Communicate effectively with both technical and non-technical stakeholders to gather requirements, deliver updates, and translate complex data concepts into actionable insights.
• Lead and collaborate on data engineering projects, from planning to execution and delivery. Ensure projects are completed on time, within scope, and meet the high-quality standards required by the team.

Knowledge, Skills, and Experience

Technical

• Relational Databases: Strong understanding of relational database technologies such as SQL Server, MySQL, or Postgres. Ability to create and optimize data models, indexes, stored procedures, implement strong security, and build performant and scalable data systems.
• Non-Relational Data Systems: Experience of working with NoSQL, streaming, graph, timeseries, or edge databases such as Cassandra, MongoDB, EventStore, Kafka, Neo4J, RethinkDB, or InfluxDB.
• Understanding of the differences between systems optimized for transaction processing vs analytics, and how to design for each of these specialisations from the perspective of data modelling, storage configuration, and technology choice.
• Understanding of binary encoding and compression approaches for complex data structures and communication over the network.
• Data Pipeline Design and Implementation: Experienced in designing and implementing data pipelines (ETL/ELT/streaming) for robust data ingestion, transformation, and distribution, ensuring access to reliable data for analysis and decision-making. Experience of working with streaming ingestion built on Kafka is ideal.
• Operations: Deep experience in maintaining database platforms and infrastructure including monitoring, alerting, and issue resolution. Ability to manage backup and restore, high-availability, disaster recovery, and scale-out topologies on one-or-more key technologies.
• Security and Compliance: Awareness of data security practices, compliance standards, and regulatory requirements to ensure data privacy and security across all data architecture designs.

Personal

• Effective communication, both written and verbal. Excellent presentation skills. Able to explain complex concepts to all levels of the business. Able to navigate difficult conversations professionally.
• Open mindedness to ensure high flexibility and the capacity to manage and lead others through rapid and profound changes of scopes, development directions and processes.
• Aptitude to learn from others and highly skilled at sharing your knowledge effectively. Experience with mentoring/coaching others in the team both technically and personally.
• Flexible approach to working hours and occasional travel.

What can McLaren offer?

We constantly strive to be better tomorrow than we are today. Our ambition is to be the most pioneering and exhilarating racing team in the world, and our collective task is to set the standards for high performance in sport. We show up every day with energy and enthusiasm, ready to play our part.

We encourage and support diversity, equity and inclusion. We will actively promote a culture that values difference and eliminates discrimination in our workplace.

McLaren Racing is based at the iconic McLaren Technology Centre (MTC) near Woking. Here at McLaren, we offer hybrid working with 3 days a week based in the MTC.

Our state of the art, sustainable campus offers many facilities including a gym, restaurant and indoor and outdoor break-out areas, as well as direct access to park and common land. The MTC is connected to Woking mainline station via regular shuttle buses, from which London Waterloo is a 30 minute train ride.