Vetted engineers with verified commercial track record in PostgreSQL
Khmelnytskyi, Ukraine
Full-Stack Developer, Fractional CTO — Websites, Apps, Servers, Databases, AI, SEO & QA
Full-stack developer working across the entire stack — websites, apps, servers, databases, AI integrations, SEO, and QA. Languages & Core: writes code in JavaScript, TypeScript, Python, PHP, Go, and Rust. Architects scalable systems for large-scale projects. Frontend & Interfaces: builds websites and web applications with React and Next.js. Crafts responsive interfaces with Tailwind CSS, Radix UI and Shadcn, adds smooth animations with Framer Motion, and interactive charts with Recharts. SEO Audit & On-Page Optimization: semantic keyword research, resolving technical indexing issues, and optimizing page load speeds. Structures page architecture, meta tags, and multi-language support (i18n). Copywriting & Content Strategy: writes technical articles, drafts precise content briefs for writers, and develops content plans. QA & Testing: full-cycle testing for websites, web services, and Android apps — manual QA for UI/UX and business logic, plus automated testing with Jest, Vitest, Playwright and E2E. Backend, Cloud & Databases: complex API integrations of any scale. Builds servers with Node.js (Express, Fastify). Works with PostgreSQL, MySQL and MongoDB, ORMs (Prisma, Drizzle), and cloud infrastructure (Supabase, Firebase, Cloudflare). Browser Extensions & Automation: develops Manifest V3 browser extensions for Chrome, Edge, Firefox and other browsers. Builds web scrapers for complex data extraction using Puppeteer and Playwright. AI & Intelligent Agents: builds custom AI agents and integrates LLMs from OpenAI, Google Gemini, and Anthropic Claude via API, including Claude Code setups. Servers & DevOps: Linux (Ubuntu) and VPS administration — setup, updates, real-time monitoring, secure process isolation, Nginx, PM2, and CI/CD deployment via GitHub Actions. Telegram Bots: develops advanced Telegram bots (Telegraf, Grammy) integrated with AI, payment gateways, Google Sheets, and crypto exchanges. Desktop Applications: builds cross-platform software for Windows and macOS using Electron and Rust. Additional expertise: site development and customization with WordPress and Astro.
Mügeln, Saxony, Germany (Saxony, Germany · Remote)
Full-Stack Engineer — TypeScript, React, Next.js, Node.js, PostgreSQL | Germany
Full-Stack engineer with 13+ years of technical experience, including 7+ years directly managing and administering production databases. Specializes in PostgreSQL relational schema modeling, slow-query optimization (EXPLAIN ANALYZE), relationship design, and data integrity via Prisma ORM and raw SQL. Designed a real-estate platform syncing 50K+ records in PostgreSQL and serving them through ~100 API endpoints.
Albertville, Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, France (Albertville, France · Remote Europe / US)
Freelance Full-Stack Developer | Stripe Certified Implementation Architect | 10+ yrs building Laravel, PHP, Vue & React
Officially certified Stripe implementation architect (Stripe Certified Implementation Architect) and full-stack developer with 12+ years of commercial experience. Specializes in complex payment flows, Stripe Billing integration, subscriptions, webhook handling, custom checkouts, and customer self-service portals on Laravel, Vue, React, and TypeScript.
London, United Kingdom (London, United Kingdom · Hybrid)
Full-Stack AI Product Engineer | ex-CTO Pineapple Builder | PostgreSQL & Relational Architecture
Full-Stack engineer and ex-CTO of the Pineapple Builder platform with 11+ years of commercial experience. Personally designed and led the PostgreSQL relational database architecture for a full-featured site builder, ensuring high content throughput via a GraphQL API. As Member of Technical Staff at DevRev, built the Agent Studio agentic platform core and agent connections to tools and databases.
London, England, United Kingdom (London, United Kingdom)
Co-Founder & CTO @ BabelBond | AWS Certified Solutions Architect | Ex-Head of Tech @ Reckon Digital
Certified AWS Solutions Architect and CTO with 10+ years of hands-on experience designing cloud backends and microservices platforms. As Head of Technology at Reckon Digital, responsible for designing and deploying production systems on AWS for the UN (World Food Programme) and international enterprises (Baker Hughes). Specializes in serverless and containerized services on AWS (Lambda, ECS, CDK, CloudFormation), highly reliable relational databases (RDS Aurora), and data security.
Tallinn, Estonia
Founder / Senior software developer
Founder and senior software developer building SaaS products end-to-end, from architecture and backend APIs to the shipped frontend. Focused on lean, maintainable systems for early-stage products.
London, United Kingdom (London, United Kingdom · Remote)
Systems Software Engineer at Databricks | Senior Rust Engineer (Backend/Systems)
Lead systems software engineer specializing in Rust. At Databricks and Neon he leads development of the Neon Proxy service — a high-performance database connection gateway handling millions of connections with low latency, high security, and minimal resource usage thanks to an efficient Rust implementation. Previously at TrueLayer he led recurring payments (VRP) and financial risk / fraud analysis projects at the intersection of Rust and SQL.
London, United Kingdom (London, United Kingdom · On-site / Remote)
Senior Front End / Full Stack Developer contractor with Next.js, React.js, TypeScript, PostgreSQL & Supabase
Senior full-stack contractor in London with deep commercial experience building high-load frontends and backends on React, Next.js (App Router, React Server Components, Server Actions), TypeScript, and Supabase. At EdenMarsh independently delivered a turnkey MVP web platform for a well-known marketing agency with a PostgreSQL database on Supabase, analytics dashboards, and Vercel deployment. At uXentrik Ltd develops the OpenBody 3D platform on Next.js, Three.js, and Supabase Postgres DB.
London, United Kingdom (London Area, United Kingdom · Hybrid)
Forward Deployed Engineer @ Stripe | Developer, Visiting Instructor, Mentor
Stripe team engineer (Forward Deployed Engineer at Stripe). Works directly with key business clients on architecture and delivery of complex payment solutions: Stripe Connect marketplaces, multi-currency billing, complex payment pipelines. Deep background in full-stack development (React, Next.js, Node.js, Python, GraphQL).
London, England, United Kingdom (London, United Kingdom)
Senior Software Engineer at On | Full-Stack & Backend Systems Architecture
Senior Full-Stack engineer and consultant with 8+ years of commercial experience designing and scaling high-load digital platforms. Lead engineer at Swiss-British sports brand On, responsible for designing and scaling the customer profile platform. Deep expertise in TypeScript, React, and Node.js microservice architecture, technical interviewing, and adopting AI tooling in development.
Klaipeda, Lithuania (Klaipeda, Lithuania · Remote)
Senior Software Engineer at valantic LT | Stripe Certified Associate Developer | Certified Magento Developer | 6+ Years in Web Development
Certified Stripe developer (Stripe Certified Associate Developer) and Senior Software Engineer with 6+ years of commercial e-commerce experience. Specializes in integrating Stripe payment modules into online stores and enterprise web apps, designing secure transactional backends in Go, PHP, and Node.js, optimizing PostgreSQL databases, and Docker containerization.
London, United Kingdom (London Area, United Kingdom · Remote / Hybrid)
Senior React Native & Full-Stack Engineer | Supabase, Next.js, PostgreSQL | AI Pipelines & TypeScript
Senior full-stack engineer with 6 years of commercial experience who launched 20+ production systems for 600K+ users. Specializes in building web and mobile systems on Next.js, React Native, and Supabase (PostgreSQL, pgvector, realtime sync, Row Level Security). Designed the LeftOverChef platform with a monorepo architecture, RAG pipelines, and a Supabase backend. Built offline-first Argonaut and Auro apps with reliable data sync via Supabase workflows.
London, England, United Kingdom (London, United Kingdom)
Python · FastAPI · React · Supabase · PostgreSQL · Gemini API · Docker | AI / Full-Stack Engineer
Full-stack and AI engineer with a master's degree from Queen Mary University of London. Builds and launches production services from scratch: designed and released the pdfexy.com platform on FastAPI, React, Supabase (PostgreSQL), and Vercel. At Varua Transport built a scalable fleet-management system with a REST API, an LLM interface for natural-language queries, and real-time dashboards connected to Supabase.
Gilgit-Baltistan, Pakistan (Remote)
AI Full Stack Developer | Lovable Expert at Upwork
AI Full Stack Developer and Lovable Expert on Upwork. Builds SaaS platforms, AI applications, MVPs, and custom web services for founders and businesses. Specializes in full-cycle development using Lovable, Supabase, Next.js, and modern AI tools (Claude Code, Cursor, Replit).
London, United Kingdom (London Area, United Kingdom)
Senior Full Stack Engineer at Marcura | PostgreSQL & Python/Node.js Specialist
Senior Software Engineer with extensive experience optimizing and scaling relational databases under high loads. At Marcura and ARTERA, responsible for designing data-storage structures in PostgreSQL and MySQL, removing query bottlenecks, configuring connection pools, and scaling cloud database instances on AWS RDS.
London, England, United Kingdom (London, United Kingdom)
AI Engineer | Forward Deployed Engineer | RAG Systems · AI Agents · LLMOps | Python · LangGraph · AWS | Ex-ThoughtWorks
AI engineer with a background in building highly reliable distributed systems (4+ years at ThoughtWorks). Specializes in building agentic systems with LangGraph, RAG pipelines, and serverless AI infrastructure on AWS Bedrock (Claude Haiku/Sonnet). At Elara, built an LLM-based enterprise communications analytics platform, processing over 94K messages through a 6-stage GenAI pipeline with structured JSON parsing and statistical normalization.
PostgreSQL is the foundational relational database for modern applications, offering advanced capabilities like JSONB indexing, table partitioning, and pgvector. However, when database queries slow down or connection limits exhaust server memory, consulting agencies charge high diagnostic retainers before conducting a query review.
ProofDevs connects you directly with independent PostgreSQL specialists who inspect execution plans, tune vacuum configurations, and optimize index selectivity at transparent rates between $50 and $110 per hour.
| Evaluation Factor | Corporate Consulting Firm | ProofDevs Independent Senior DBA |
|---|---|---|
| Hourly Rate | $175 – $300 / hr | $50 – $110 / hr |
| Diagnostic Retainer | Mandatory $5,000 – $15,000 upfront | None (pay only for diagnostic hours used) |
| Triage Availability | 24 – 72 hour ticket dispatch queue | Direct diagnostic access within 2 – 4 hours |
| Deliverables | Static analysis slide decks | Implemented indexes, vacuum tuning, & benchmarks |
| Access Security | Third-party vendor account overhead | Direct connection via secure bastion / read-replica |
PostgreSQL performance issues typically stem from sequential table scans, missing composite indexes, and autovacuum starvation. When tables experience high update volumes, dead tuples accumulate, causing table bloat and degrading sequential scans.
Senior PostgreSQL engineers profile queries using EXPLAIN (ANALYZE, BUFFERS), pinpointing exact disk read bottlenecks. They design specialized B-Tree, GIN, and GiST indexes to satisfy queries directly from memory.
Furthermore, specialists configure connection poolers like PgBouncer, preventing connection thrashing and reducing server memory usage under high concurrent client loads.
Specialists implement advanced PostgreSQL features including declarative table partitioning, row-level security (RLS), and pgvector similarity indexing.
Architecture Rule: The GIN Indexing Strategy for JSONB
Querying unstructured JSONB fields without proper indexing forces PostgreSQL into expensive sequential scans. Senior engineers implement jsonb_path_ops GIN indexes, accelerating key-value lookups by orders of magnitude.
Engagement timelines for standard commercial PostgreSQL tasks.
Independent PostgreSQL specialists charge between $50 and $110 per hour. Diagnostic reviews can be performed using schema exports and anonymized execution plans without accessing customer data. Clients retain 100% control over all database credentials and security access lists.
Run self-hosted Postgres 16 on NVMe VMs when you need superuser extensions like pg_cron, PostGIS 3.4, or custom collations and your team can own backups. A tuned node with 16 vCPU and 64 GB RAM serves 5,000 to 15,000 transactions per minute on mixed OLTP reads with pg_stat_statements guiding indexes. Setup takes 12 to 25 hours including Barman or pgBackRest restores, but patching and failover remain your on-call duty.
Pick Amazon RDS Postgres or Aurora when managed backups, Multi-AZ failover under 60 seconds, and IAM authentication cut operational load. RDS suits 200 GB to 2 TB estates with Performance Insights flagging top SQL in 6 to 14 hours of tuning; Aurora fits bursty serverless v2 workloads scaling 0.5 to 128 ACUs. Expect 15 to 35 hours for parameter groups, PgBouncer, and replica lag alarms, plus storage I/O charges above self-hosted baselines.
Use Supabase Postgres for product teams wanting instant REST via PostgREST, Auth, and Storage buckets, or add Citus 12 and TimescaleDB for sharded and time-series loads. Supabase ships an MVP backend in 15 to 30 hours with row-level security policies; TimescaleDB compresses metrics tables 10x for retention queries; Citus shards tenants above 500 GB. Keep pgvector HNSW indexes on a separate review cycle since recall tuning needs 6 to 12 hours.
| Option | Setup and tuning | Upkeep and cost | Pick when |
|---|---|---|---|
| Self-hosted Postgres 16 | 12-25 hrs provision and tune | $50-$110/hr; you own patching | Custom extensions, PostGIS, full control |
| RDS Postgres Multi-AZ | 6-14 hrs query tuning | Managed backups, failover under 60s | 200 GB-2 TB OLTP needing low ops load |
| Aurora Serverless v2 | 15-35 hrs params and pooling | 0.5-128 ACU scaling, I/O billing | Bursty SaaS with variable traffic |
| Supabase / Citus / TimescaleDB | 15-30 hrs MVP or shard setup | RLS and hypertables included | Product MVPs, time-series, 500 GB+ tenants |
Legacy estates sit on Postgres 9.6 to 12, unpartitioned 200 GB tables, and MySQL or Oracle schemas with stored procedures nobody trusts. Engineers open with a 6 to 12 hour audit: pg_upgrade --check output, bloat ratios from pgstattuple, top SQL from pg_stat_statements, and lock waits from pg_locks. The strangler pattern migrates one schema or tenant at a time with foreign data wrappers or Debezium CDC instead of a weekend cutover.
Phase one stabilizes operations: PgBouncer transaction pooling, tuned autovacuum workers, pgBackRest backups with restore drills, and Grafana alerts on replication lag above 5 seconds. Phase two runs pg_upgrade or logical replication to Postgres 16 in a 15 to 35 hour band, rehearsed twice on a cloned volume. Partitioning follows by range on created_at or tenant_id with pg_partman, backfilling 10 million rows per batch to avoid long locks.
Cross-engine moves use ora2pg or pgLoader with casting logs reviewed line by line, then shadow writes verified for 72 hours before traffic flips. Typical bands are 20 to 40 hours for pooling plus backup repair, 30 to 70 hours for version upgrades with driver testing, and 25 to 60 hours for sharding or hypertable conversion with query rewrites. Each release keeps a one-command rollback to the prior primary with WAL archives retained.
Bring the specialist in before granting production writes. Hand over schema.sql, EXPLAIN ANALYZE outputs, pg_stat_statements snapshots, PgBouncer and postgresql.conf files, backup restore logs, and slow query samples with row counts. A senior returns a 5 to 9 hour findings pack: missing composite indexes, oversized JSONB scans, RLS policies causing seq scans, bloat above 25 percent, and replica lag graphs tied to deploy times.
Separate tunable debt from structural risk. Tunable items like absent covering indexes, autovacuum starvation, or chatty N+1 writes clear in 10 to 30 hours with measured latency drops. Rewrite signals are unlogged money mutations, 800-line PL/pgSQL billing functions without tests, or multi-terabyte single tables with no partition key. Seniors quote both paths in hours and mark the point where patching costs more than rebuilding the schema.
Rewrite threshold
Rebuild the schema when money mutations skip audit logs, billing lives in untested 800-line functions, or a multi-terabyte table has no partition key. Rebuilds run 80 to 160 hours against 60 to 120 hours of patching that leaves outage risk in place. Index gaps, vacuum settings, and pooling faults stay in fix territory.
Probe incident reasoning over trivia about isolation levels. Seniors explain how they read Buffers and Sort Method from EXPLAIN, sized shared_buffers at 25 percent of RAM, and chose BRIN versus B-Tree from correlation stats. Juniors quote index names but cannot connect lock waits to deploy logs. Request a redacted tuning report with before-and-after p95 numbers and a rollback note from a migration they led.
Commission a paid 3 to 5 hour trial on a staging clone: index the top three slow queries and document buffer-hit gains. Acceptance means p95 latency down at least 40 percent, zero sequential scans on targeted paths, pgTAP or regression checks green, and a one-page runbook for vacuum and alert thresholds. Pay $50 to $110 per hour for the trial and proceed when the diff applies cleanly without follow-up fixes.
You will receive matches with available database performance specialists within 2 to 4 hours.
Rates range from $50 to $110 per hour, based on expertise in high-concurrency vacuum tuning, indexing, and replication.
Yes. Query profiling, index analysis, and server configuration tuning can be conducted using schema structures, EXPLAIN BUFFERS plans, and anonymized logs without reading customer data.
Yes. Specialists regularly manage Amazon RDS PostgreSQL, Amazon Aurora, Supabase, and self-hosted Linux PostgreSQL clusters.
You receive documented execution plans, added composite indexes, server configuration adjustments, and verified query latency benchmarks.
Pick self-hosted Postgres 16 for custom extensions in 12 to 25 hours, RDS for 200 GB to 2 TB estates needing failover under 60 seconds, and Aurora Serverless v2 for bursty loads scaling 0.5 to 128 ACUs. Supabase ships MVPs in 15 to 30 hours. Share your data size and ops capacity and the match favors the lower upkeep.
Slow-query tuning takes 6 to 15 hours, PgBouncer and cache setup 6 to 14 hours, partitioning 12 to 30 hours, and HA replication 15 to 35 hours. Version upgrades add 30 to 70 hours with rehearsal. Rates are $50 to $110 per hour with a fixed band agreed upfront.
Yes, if you provide schema.sql, EXPLAIN outputs, pg_stat_statements snapshots, and backup logs. A 5 to 9 hour audit maps index gaps, bloat above 25 percent, and lag causes. Rebuild is advised only for unlogged money writes or multi-terabyte tables with no partition key.
Run a paid 3 to 5 hour trial on a staging clone to index three slow queries. Hire when p95 latency drops at least 40 percent with seq scans gone and regression checks green. Seniors cite buffer hits and rollback notes; juniors give generic index advice.
Provide schema exports, postgresql.conf, PgBouncer settings, slow-query samples, backup restore logs, and bastion or read-replica access. Anonymized plans work when customer rows cannot leave your VPC. Missing logs add 3 to 6 hours of discovery at $50 to $110 per hour.
Yes. Most offer 2 to 4 weeks of follow-up at $50 to $110 per hour covering vacuum drift, lag alarms, and plan regressions after deploys. You keep Grafana dashboards, alert thresholds, and a rollback runbook, so handoff takes 2 to 3 hours.
Independents charge $50 to $110 per hour versus $175 to $300 per hour at consulting firms with no $5,000 to $15,000 retainer. Matching takes 2 to 4 hours. A 20-hour tuning engagement saves roughly $2,500 to $4,000 against firm billing.
