To achieve the same thing in perl (and in keeping with a similar layout to your code) try something like this:

use DBI;
use strict;

my $user = $ENV{REMOTE_USER};
my $driver = 'mysql';
my $database = 'db';
my $dsn = "DBI:$driver:database=$database";
my $dbh = DBI->connect($dsn, 'user', 'password')
        or die $DBI::errstr;

my $result = $dbh->prepare("SELECT * FROM tablename WHERE username =?"
+);
$result->execute($user);

my $row = $result->fetchrow_hashref;
my $engr     = $row->{engr};
my $team     = $row->{team_name};
my $position = $row->{team_position};
my $group    = $row->{grp};
my $level    = $row->{level};

$result->finish;
$dbh->disconnect;
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update: corrected a few missing mys