Postgres Woman of the Month October 2026 - Priyanka Chatterjee

Introduction:

I am originally from India and currently living in the vibrant city of Berlin in Germany. I started my career as an Oracle DBA but soon jumped ships to PostgreSQL and never looked back. I have worked with several companies as a DBA. As for PostgreSQL community, it started off by attending PostgreSQL conferences as an audience. The energy at these conferences were infectious and for the past few years, I have been a speaker and volunteer at several Postgres conferences. The community has been very welcoming and encouraging.

Journey in PostgreSQL`

It all started when a customer didn’t want to pay for expensive Database licences and needed another solution. The only viable option to fit all their requirements was PostgreSQL. This was back in the days of version 9.6. My first pleasant shock while doing a POC with Postgres was how easy and quick it is to install.

Can you share a pivotal moment or project in your PostgreSQL career that has been particularly meaningful to you?

After I moved to Europe, I started engaging more in the PostgreSQL community. I got to work with some amazing and super smart people who have been contributing to Postgres for several years. This motivated me to push myself out of the comfort zone of just daily work and step into a whole new world where people are so passionate about the common goal and development of PostgreSQL.

Contributions and Achievements:

I present talks in several PostgreSQL conferences on DBA related topics where I share my learnings, challenges and experience that I face and overcome on daily basis. It has been an honour to be on the stage infornt of all kind of Postgres folks, from contributors to students. .I have also been part of ‘Call of Paper committee ‘in pgconf.de and pgconf.eu. I also promote Postgres in my own company and network.

(II)  Have you faced any challenges in your work with PostgreSQL, and how did you overcome them?

A lot of time people assume that a DBA is unnecessary when you are hosting your databases on the cloud. Unless one day things go down and then the pressure and the urgency to fix everything. The whole fiasco could be avoided if a DBA was present from the start. PostgreSQL defaults are usually good to start with but it is important to tune according to how the workload is evolving.

Community Involvement:

I have been lucky to work alongside PostgreSQL community members at my work as almost every company I worked with uses PostgreSQL and has experts. Apart from that, living in Berlin has given me the opportunity to easily participate in social and technical events and discussions. I also actively watch and respond to Postgres mailing lists.

(II) Can you share your experience with mentoring or supporting other women in the PostgreSQL ecosystem?

PostgreSQL Europe has a Diversity Task force which fosters the involvement and inclusion of people from all backgrounds. I have attended and even co organised one such meeting.

Insights and Advice:

Don’t be scared to speak up and reach out. Women in the community are friendly, supportive, brave and very smart. You have an idea or willingness to participate in any event or project, don’t hesitate to reach out.

(II)  Are there any resources (books, courses, forums) you’d recommend to someone looking to deepen their PostgreSQL knowledge?

“PostgreSQL Query Optimization” by Henrietta Dombrovskaya and PostgreSQL mailing lists (esp. pgsql-admin ).

Looking Forward:

pg_plan_advise: a new feature that can allow users to preserve a good query plan. This has been a feature which DBAs coming from other database engine have missed a lot. Other upcoming feature that excites me is having REPACK concurrently(to remove bloats without exclusive locks).It existed as an extension before and widely used but now it will be a built in command.

(II)  Do you have any upcoming projects or goals within the PostgreSQL community that you can share?

I am very much looking forward to pgconf. eu in Valencia, Spain this month where I will be delivering a talk on ” Security Strategies for PostgreSQL Backups”.

Personal Reflection:

Irrespective of which company I work for or in which part of the world I live in, I know there are people who enjoy Postgres as much as I do. One can never get stuck when working with Postgres, you always have a line you can reach out to for any kind of support.

(II)  How do you balance your professional and personal life, especially in a field that is constantly evolving?

My professional work revolves around everything related to PostgreSQL. That in itself keeps me on my toes to be updated with the changing ecosystem. But personal side projects are also my way to experiment with new features and how far it can be pushed.

Message to the community

No matter where you come from, there is always a place for you in this community as long as you enjoy anything that relates to PostgreSQL.