I came here to say something along those lines. Our project has a SQLite backend for hassle-free local development, and we use Postgres in all remote servers. Tests run both in local and remote.
What hassle did you expereince when using PostgreSQL locally? On the projects I have been in we have ran PostgreSQL in local development almost painlessly. PostgreSQL is quite developer firendly, at least for my use cases.
I suggest using syncrhonous_commit=off to sped up the test suite and to use unix sockets (assuming you do not run Windows).
The problem with using PostgreSQL was difficulty to make it work everywhere, we have at least one dev in each platform. I use the pure JS version of SQLite (sql.js in npm). The server is fairly small, having the bulk of the code in the client (SPA).
If it wasn't for the MySQL I had to implement after the SQLite work, I would say it's better to investigate the quickest way to configure a local Postgres DB. There are portable windows binaries.
I suggest using syncrhonous_commit=off to sped up the test suite and to use unix sockets (assuming you do not run Windows).