The posting
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
The Migrations team owns the full suite of MOLT (Migrate Off Legacy Technology) tooling: Convert, Fetch, Replicator, and Verify. We also recently launched the Migration Assistant, which brings the individual MOLT tools together into a single migration workflow which guides customers through moving their databases to CockroachDB and Cockroach Continuum. We're looking for a staff software engineer to help build out the Migration Assistant, expand the capabilities of the MOLT toolkit, and to drive innovation around how AI can be leveraged to further reduce friction during the migration process..
You'll report to Eric Alton, who leads the Migrations and Observability teams, and work closely with other engineers, SREs, and our product and design teams.
This role follows Cockroach Labs' hybrid model: Roachers local to an office come in Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays, and work flexibly the rest of the week.
You Will
- Build and extend CockroachDB's migration tooling, including the Migration Assistant, to make migrating to CockroachDB effortless.
- Apply AI to real migration problems in a way that ensures security of customer data and correctness of the migration workflow.
- Help expand the capabilities of MOLT's Convert, Fetch, Replicator, and Verify tools into a single, cohesive migration experience.
- Develop primarily in Go (we'll teach you if you don't know it) alongside engineers and PMs across the cloud and database teams.
- Take part in a collaborative, technically rigorous culture, and help shape engineering practices on a growing team.
The Expectations
In the first month, you'll join the team and get familiar with our production systems, the MOLT tooling suite, the Migration Assistant's architecture, and how customers actually migrate to CockroachDB. Take the time to learn the technology, the team, and how we work before diving into big projects.
After 3 months, you'll be a full member of the team, contributing to the MOLT and Migration Assistant tooling ecosystem. You'll have a feel for where customers hit friction during migrations, and you'll work with your manager to point your efforts at the areas that matter most.
As the team grows and the Migration Assistant matures, you'll have real influence over where migration tooling at CockroachDB goes next, including how far we push AI to take the guesswork out of migrations. We also offer technical training and mentorship to help you grow in whatever direction you want.
You Have
- A passion for complex technical products, and exposure to topics like distributed systems, data replication, concurrency control, file systems, or SQL processing.
- Comfort with Go, C/C++, Java, or Python.
- A strong grasp of system design for high-throughput data systems.
- Experience with one or more database technologies (e.g. MySQL, Postgres, Oracle, SQL Server, Db2).
- Experience and interest in designing and building systems and tools that leverage AI.
- Good judgement about where AI should be integrated into a system and where traditional approaches are preferable.
- A track record of strong collaboration and technical leadership; you enjoy collaborative brainstorming, design and code review, and pairing with teammates on hard problems.
- 7+ years of relevant experience (preferred).
- A BS in Computer Science or equivalent experience.
The Team
Eric Alton - Sr. Manager, Engineering
Eric leads engineering for the Migrations and Observability teams. His Migrations team recently shipped the Migration Assistant and are now focused on further improvements to the migration tooling suite. Before joining Cockroach Labs, Eric managed teams at Amazon (Aurora MySQL) and worked as an engineer at IBM (Db2). He is based in the company's Toronto office and lives north of the city with his wife and two sons. Outside of work, Eric enjoys riding his bicycle, and is an avid gamer: board, card, and video.
Babu Srithar Muthukrishnan - Sr. Director, Engineering
Srithar leads Platform Engineering at Cockroach Labs, overseeing the teams responsible for the infrastructure, tooling, and systems that keep the engineering organization running at scale. He played a foundational role in establishing Cockroach Labs' engineering presence in India, serving as the site's inaugural Engineering Director and building the team from the ground up — and has recently made the move to New York City, where you can find him at Cockroach Labs' NYC HQ. Before joining Cockroach Labs, Srithar held senior engineering leadership positions at Nutanix and Clumio, and most recently served as VP of Engineering at Apty, where he led engineering globally. He's passionate about building high-quality software products and lean, high-performing teams by unlocking the potential of the people around him. When he's not working, you can find Srithar exploring NYC with his family.
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!
The annual anticipated base salary range for candidates for this role is listed below. Salary is one component of the Cockroach Labs’ Total Rewards package, which also includes: stock options, medical insurance, vision insurance, dental insurance, life and disability insurance, funds for professional development, flexible paid time off, paid sick days and holidays, paid parental leave, and wellbeing benefits. We have a match on 401(k) contributions in the U.S.
We set competitive pay ranges for all roles based on function, level, and geographic location, benchmarked against similar stage growth companies. Benefits programs are designed according to local market practices. Actual salaries may vary and fall outside of this range depending on factors such as a candidate’s qualifications, geographic location, skills, experience, and competencies. In addition, we are often open to a wide variety of profiles, and recognize that the person we hire may be less experienced (or more senior) than this job description as posted.
Annual Anticipated Base Salary Range (USD)
$180,000—$235,000 USD
Annual Anticipated Base Salary Range (CAD)
$160,000—$210,000 CAD
