Sr. Engineering Manager, Key Value (KV)

The Role

The Key Value (KV) layer of CockroachDB handles billions of transactions per day across various industries including banking, payments, retail, and SaaS platforms. This includes the distributed transaction protocol, replication layer using Raft consensus, and data placement allocator. As the leader of this team, you will manage projects, coach engineers, and run the performance and growth process while maintaining the technical bar and culture as the team evolves.

Drive the Roadmap

You will partner with Engineering and Product leadership to plan, prioritize, and ship multi-quarter projects across the team's subdomains - replication, transactions, distribution, and resource management. You will also represent the team externally by participating in tech talks, conferences, meetups, and hackathons.

Expectations

• First 30 days: Embed in the team, get to know each engineer, the technical sub-domains, and the cross-functional partners you’ll work with most.
• By 3 months: Running the team day to day, alongside the team’s tech leads and Product partners. Solid working knowledge of CockroachDB's architecture and KV's place in it. Coaching engineers and managing performance against a clear roadmap.
• By 6 months: Confidently leading the team across its complex multi-project roadmap. Shaping how KV is structured for the workstreams it's signed up for - where to invest, where to push back. Hiring against a plan you believe in.

Proven Engineering Management Chops

• 5+ years managing software engineering teams. Manager / Senior Manager (T6/T7) equivalent today.
• Driven projects from prototype to production. Developed and coached engineers, driven promotions. Made tough decisions.

Deep Technical Foundation

• Background in databases or systems infrastructure (storage, compute, networking).
• Can hold your own in design discussions, push back on trade-offs, and earn the respect of senior ICs.

Genuine Interest in the Domain

• Distributed systems and databases aren't a stop on a career path for you. They're work you find interesting.

The Team

Reporting to Nick Travers, Director, Engineering, you will lead the KV team within the Database Platform group at Cockroach Labs. The team works closely with Storage, SQL, Server, Disaster Recovery, and Change Data Capture teams. The team is part of a hybrid work model with Roachers coming in on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays and working flexibly the rest of the week.

About the Company

Cockroach Labs is an Equal Opportunity Employer building a diverse and inclusive workforce. We are committed to fostering a workplace that encourages collaboration and allows all employees to do their best work. Benefits include stock options, medical, vision, dental, life and disability insurance, professional development funds, flexible time off, paid holidays, paid sick days, paid parental leave, a 401(k) plan, and wellbeing benefits.