Member of Technical Staff (KV)

Category-defining tech. Career-defining work.

Lots of tech companies disrupt. But, many fail when they try to scale. We're different. CockroachDB makes it easier for companies to build and scale apps. This is how and why we're helping some of the most innovative companies on the planet. We tackle problems head-on and focus on solutions that create lasting impact. 

Because when our customers win, we all win. 

The Role

We are looking for a backend software engineer excited about growing an open-source, cloud-native distributed SQL database to join our KV team. This team is responsible for the distributed foundations of CRDB, including Resource Management (data sharding, placement, rebalancing and Admission Control), the Transaction Layer (e.g., transactional APIs, distributed transactions and concurrency control) and the Replication layer (e.g., Raft, distributed lease management and configuration changes). Together, these subsystems form the underpinnings of CRDB and the guarantees it provides to clients, namely Fault Tolerance, Availability, Consistency, Transactional Semantics as well as its Performance and Scalability. We collaborate closely with Product and other Engineering teams, such as the Storage, and SQL teams. Join us to be a part of cutting-edge work that provides foundational database functionality and enables a seamless experience for CockroachDB users.

You Will

• Contribute to the growth of CockroachDB by bringing your expertise and commitment to excellence to help build a database that makes data easy for everyone.
• Develop in Go, but if you don't know it, you'll learn while you're here.
• Work in an environment in which access to state-of-the-art AI-assisted planning and development is provided.
• Identify and resolve performance bottlenecks across the KV layer, including transaction latency, replication overhead, and resource utilization under load.
• Work closely with other engineers and product managers across our cloud and database teams. 
• Help foster a collaborative culture and exchange knowledge with a highly experienced technical organization.
• Ensure that CockroachDB remains scalable, survivable, and consistent as we continue to grow as a company.

The Expectations

In the first month, you will join your engineering team and start to learn about our production systems, software development workflow, and the architecture of CockroachDB and our cloud offerings. We believe that it's essential for you to take this time to become familiar with our technology, company, and our culture.

After three months, you'll be a fully-fledged member of the KV team and feel comfortable contributing to CockroachDB. You will begin determining the parts of our product that most interest you and work with your manager to focus your efforts on projects that align with your interests and our goals.

We want our users to have a phenomenal experience using our product. You play a crucial role in making CockroachDB a joy to use, and as our team grows, you will have the opportunity to shape the direction of development for CockroachDB and CockroachDB Cloud. We also offer technical training and experienced mentorship to help you learn and advance your career into whatever you wish it to be.

You Have

• Passion for working on complex technical products and exposure to topics like distributed systems, consensus, data replication, concurrency control, file systems, or SQL processing. 
• Used systems languages such as Go, C, C++, or Rust.
• Experience designing distributed systems, including trade-offs around consistency, availability, and performance.
• Experience (or strong interest) in adopting AI-centric development workflows.
• Experience building collaborative relationships with your colleagues. You enjoy being part of the code review process and partnering with your teammates on challenging problems.
• Experience working with a distributed team, working across multiple timezones.
• Experience with and motivation to take ownership of technical problems end-to-end.
• 5+ years of relevant experience is ideal.
• A BS in Computer Science or equivalent experience.
• Bonus: exposure to database internals and database development.
• Bonus: experience with high availability designs and distributed storage/database architectures.
• Bonus: you want to play an active role in how we use AI to reduce toil and build high-quality software.
• Bonus: experience building and running large-scale distributed systems in production.
• Bonus: MS/PhD or research experience in a relevant domain.

The Team

Reporting to Nick Travers - Sr. Manager, Engineering

Nick joined Cockroach Labs in 2021, and looks after the Database Platform group, consisting of the Storage, Key Value (KV) and Server teams. Storage is responsible for Pebble, our RocksDB-inspired Log Structured Merge (LSM) Tree implementation. KV turns multiple Pebble stores into a multi-node distributed KV store, encompassing replication, transactions and resource management. The Server Team is responsible for a node’s lifecycle, including spin-up and tear-down, and the networking stack. Nick lives in Los Angeles with his wife and son. Hailing from Perth, Australia, he is an avid Arsenal Football Club supporter, dabbles in cookery, and loves being outdoors.

Jordan Lewis - VP of Engineering

Jordan is the Head of Engineering for Cockroach Labs. He’s responsible for the teams that build, maintain and keep CockroachDB reliably serving the needs of Cockroach Labs’ most demanding customer base. He joined Cockroach Labs as a Database Engineer in 2016 when it was just 25 people before moving into engineering leadership leading the Global Engineering organization. Jordan lives in his hometown of Brooklyn NY with his wife. Outside of work he enjoys folk music and riding his electric scooter around town.

Cockroach Labs is proud to be an Equal Opportunity Employer building a diverse and inclusive workforce. If you need additional accommodations to feel comfortable during your interview process, please email us at accessibility@cockroachlabs.com.

Cockroach Labs has a hybrid work model, with Roachers that are local to one of our offices coming in on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays and working flexibly the rest of the week. While we’ve learned valuable lessons working remotely, nothing can replace the connection, creativity, and fun that occurs when Roachers get together and we are committed to fostering a workplace that encourages collaboration and allows us all to do our best work.

Benefits

• Stock Options
• Medical Insurance
• Vision Insurance
• Dental Insurance
• Life and Disability Insurance
• Professional Development Funds
• Flexible Time Off
• Paid Holidays
• Paid Sick Days
• Paid Parental Leave
• Retirement Benefits
• Mental Wellbeing Benefits
• And more!