Staff Field Engineer, Cockroach Labs
$140-175k
+ Stock Options + Commission
More information about location
Cloud-native, distributed SQL database
Open for applications
Cloud-native, distributed SQL database
501-1000 employees
Open for applications
$140-175k
+ Stock Options + Commission
More information about location
501-1000 employees
Company mission
Cockroach Labs' mission is to make data easy by providing an industry-leading model for resilience, horizontal scalability to accommodate fast-growing businesses, and the ability to move data close to business' customers, wherever they reside across the globe.
Role
Who you are
- 5+ years of hands-on software engineering experience, ideally with distributed systems or complex infrastructure projects
- Exposure to customer-facing or field engineering roles, providing technical guidance and support to clients
- Proficiency in at least one programming language; Go is preferred, but not required
- Strong understanding of containerization (Docker) and orchestration (Kubernetes)
- Familiarity with CI/CD pipelines, version control (Git), and Infrastructure as Code (Terraform, Ansible, etc.)
- Experience working with at least one major public cloud provider (AWS, GCP, or Azure)
- Proven ability to diagnose and resolve complex technical issues in production environments
- Strong written and verbal communication skills, capable of tailoring information to both technical and non-technical audiences
- Comfortable partnering with cross-functional teams—such as Solutions Engineers and Enterprise Architects—to gather requirements and drive customer success
- Willingness to adapt to changing priorities and customer needs in a fast-paced, innovative environment
What the job involves
- As a Field Software Engineer at Cockroach Labs, you’ll play a dual role: a hands-on software engineer contributing to CockroachDB’s ongoing development, and a trusted technical advisor helping customers realize its full potential
- You’ll design and build new features, integrations, and tools that address real-world needs—ranging from performance optimizations to orchestration enhancements—while also providing expertise to troubleshoot and resolve the most challenging database issues
- By working directly with customers in the field and collaborating closely with our Product and Engineering teams, you’ll ensure CockroachDB remains a best-in-class, distributed SQL database that solves complex data problems at global scale
- Design, implement, and maintain new features, integrations, and tooling to enhance CockroachDB, drawing on customer feedback and real-world use cases
- Develop and refine tools, scripts, and automation frameworks that streamline CockroachDB deployments, configurations, and scaling across on-prem, cloud, or hybrid environments—working closely with DevOps teams to integrate solutions into existing pipelines
- Investigate and resolve complex issues related to distributed systems, database performance, networking, and application integrations, ensuring production-grade reliability
- Gather and synthesize customer insights, working closely with Solutions Engineers and Enterprise Architects to provide actionable feedback to R&D, helping shape product enhancements and guide strategic roadmap decisions
- Act as a technical advisor for customers—leading architectural design sessions and providing best practices—while forging strong, long-term partnerships
- Create and maintain clear, actionable documentation for deployments, runbooks, and troubleshooting processes, and share insights with both internal teams and external users
- Within the first month, you'll make initial code contributions and set up your development environment
- By 60 days, you'll be actively engaging in more complex engineering tasks, collaborating with customer-facing teams, and starting to support customer projects
- At the 90-day mark, you'll be expected to lead small-scale projects independently, provide peer guidance, and deepen your expertise in performance optimization
- Beyond the first 90 days, you’ll consistently contribute impactful code, act as a technical advisor to customers, and influence product direction by sharing insights from the field with the R&D team
Our take
Cockroach Labs was founded by a team of ex-Google employees who wanted to build a database management system similar to Google’s Spanner. The result is CockroachDB, an open-source distributed SQL database. It offers local or global scaling with familiar SQL, failproof fault tolerance, and guaranteed transaction consistency, and can be deployed across any cloud.
Maintaining full SQL compliance with global cloud capabilities will help Cockroach Labs take advantage of the wave of companies needing to scale their existing SQL databases onto the cloud. Cockroach Labs grew from a $2 billion valuation to $5 billion in under a year, proving itself as an enticing and approachable prospect in this developing sector.
It already commands a high-end raft of clients including Comcast, Bose, and Baidu - but competition is stiff, particularly with industry giants like Oracle and AWS. Its hope is that CockroachDB’s high failure tolerance and geo-distribution will provide attractively swift functionality whilst allowing customers to remain within their legal jurisdictions - and will prove pivotal in 5G use cases. Its success to date, targeted updates to ease network migrations, and its recent expansion into EMEA markets, suggest it has a strong shot.
Steph
Company Specialist at Welcome to the Jungle
Insights
11% employee growth in 12 months
Company
Funding (last 2 of 7 rounds)
Dec 2021
$278m
SERIES F
Jan 2021
$160m
SERIES E
Total funding: $633.2m
Company benefits
- Employee referral bonus + donation match
- Connect and Contribute days
- Flexible Working
- Spring Health and an Employee Assistance Program to provide free counseling and support mental health
- $2500 annually to support learning and development through workshops, conferences, and networking events
- We dedicate company time to bond over everything from trivia and karaoke to paint-alongs and fitness classes
- Flexible Time Off
- 100% health insurance coverage & One Medical membership
- Gym discounts & free Citibike membership
- FSA
- 401(k)
- 12 weeks of paid parental leave & $500 in baby bucks
- Relocation Support
Company HQ
Chelsea, New York, NY
Leadership
Spencer Kimball
(Co-founder & CEO)Worked at WeGo Systems as CTO for 3 years before joining Google as a Software Engineer for almost 10 years. Also, previous CTO of Viewfinder and Engineer at Square.
Peter Matiss
(CTO)Previously Software Engineer at Square, Co-Founder at Viewfinder and Software Engineer at Google.
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