Staff Software Engineer - Storage

Category-defining tech. Career-defining work.

For more than a decade, Cockroach Labs has built database technology trusted to power some of the world's most mission-critical applications. Now, as AI transforms how software is created and operated, the infrastructure behind it has to keep pace. Cockroach Continuum is built to meet this moment, bringing individual databases together into one fleet designed for agentic applications, where AI agents help teams provision, scale, and optimize workloads at machine speed.  

At Cockroach Labs, you'll solve problems that didn't exist five years ago alongside people who believe the simplest solutions often require the most sophisticated thinking. Your work will run in production at some of the most innovative companies in the world. The people who thrive here are the ones who want to own that opportunity.  

The Role

We’re looking for a Staff Software Engineer to join our Storage Team to help shape and build CockroachDB’s storage systems. Storage is the foundation of CockroachDB, responsible for the safe, durable and efficient persistence and retrieval of data, on top of which the rest of the database is built. Our team develops and maintains Pebble, an innovative Log Structured Merge (LSM) Tree storage engine purpose built for Multi Version Concurrency Control (MVCC) data, and Plenum, the elastic, disaggregated storage layer that separates a cluster’s storage from its compute and allows them to scale independently. 

In this role, you’ll bring deep storage expertise to complex problems spanning Pebble, Plenum, encryption at rest (EAR), CockroachDB’s storage interfaces, and the cloud environments in which they operate. You’ll work hands-on, lead the design and delivery of significant improvements, and help the team make sound tradeoffs among durability, performance, scalability, cost, and operational simplicity.

You Will

• Work on hard technical problems. Apply your deep knowledge of storage systems to solve technical challenges at the core of CockroachDB and its storage layers.
• Lead through collaboration. Partner with engineering and product leadership to identify, design, and drive significant Storage initiatives, making tradeoffs clear and building alignment across involved teams.
• Be a trusted partner across the company. Work closely and collaboratively with other engineers across the database and cloud organizations, product, support, and field engineering.
• Set the standard for engineering excellence. Raise the effectiveness of the team through design reviews, mentorship, and clear technical communication. Help the team leverage AI to produce high-quality software in a modern development environment.
• Ship mission-critical software. Ensure that CockroachDB remains scalable, survivable, and consistent as we continue to grow as a company. We work in Go and Rust, but if you don't know them, you'll learn while you're here.

The Expectations

In your first 30 days, you will establish relationships with the Storage team and learn about the Storage team’s domain and CockroachDB architecture. You will ship your first project.

After 3 months, you will be fully integrated into the team and comfortable contributing to the Storage team’s roadmap in partnership with Product. You’ll have built an understanding of the Storage team’s tech stack and feel comfortable with the architecture and components the team develops and maintains.

After 6 months, you will have led a meaningful piece of Storage work and participate in the Storage oncall rotation.

You Have

• Deep systems experience. 8+ years building complex distributed systems or storage software, including significant time working on distributed systems, concurrency control, file systems, data replication, I/O performance, or memory management. 
• Storage architecture expertise. You have built or evolved a storage system such as log-structured merge-trees, blob storage, or cloud object storage.
• Production experience. Experience building, running, and debugging large-scale distributed systems in production and evolving systems through rolling upgrades.
• A collaborative approach. You have a passion for solving hard technical problems with others, sharing context, giving and receiving thoughtful feedback, and helping teammates succeed. You enjoy mentoring other engineers and helping them grow.
• Hands-on ability. You write production-ready code in systems programming languages like Go, Rust, or C/C++. You dig into hard bugs, profiles, and incidents when it matters.

The Team

Rachael Harding - Manager, Engineering

Rachael leads the Storage team within the Database Engineering organization, where she oversees the development of Pebble and Plenum. Based in the Bay Area with her family, Rachael enjoys sampling pastries, exploring local parks, and baking with her kids.

Nick Travers - Director, Engineering

Nick joined Cockroach Labs in 2021 and leads Database Engineering - the group of teams building CockroachDB. Originally from Perth, Australia, he lives in Los Angeles with his family. Arsenal supporter, cook, outdoors person.

Isaac Wong - EVP of Research & Development

Isaac is responsible for the health of the engineering organization at Cockroach Labs. He partners closely with teams to ensure we have a balanced culture that promotes quality and innovation in pursuit of our goals. Before joining Cockroach Labs Isaac was in life sciences for 16 years with Medidata Solutions where he had a front row seat on the exciting ride from a 30 person startup to more than 2000 people worldwide. But the lure of distributed, resilient, and consistent SQL databases, along with the amazing technology and culture at Cockroach Labs proved too much. When not working he likes to draw, play the piano, and search NYC for cannoli's with his wife and kids.

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 [email protected].

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!