The Role

Cockroach Labs is hiring a staff-level software engineer for the Developer Infrastructure team, part of our Engineering Productivity organization. This role is more than a traditional build/CI-infrastructure profile that spans build systems and cloud infrastructure. Our recent focus on developing AI tooling means that you will spend time building AI tools engineers depend on every day, not just keeping CI green.

The Developer Infrastructure team builds development tools and systems that every engineer at Cockroach Labs relies on, from the CI pipeline to internal cloud and AI-powered development tools. Success in this role means partnering closely with teams across DB and Cloud Engineering, understanding where their workflows break down, and shipping tools that reduce friction.
Our team values

• Providing high-quality support to Cockroach Labs engineering teams and a strong desire to help other people work more productively.
• Engaging with other Cockroach Labs engineers to build relationships, listen to developer pain points, and identify opportunities to apply AI and automation to their workflows.
• Minimizing and automating away toil - including the toil of using AI safely and reliably.
• Shipping incrementally, measuring quality with data, and being honest about where AI tooling still needs a human in the loop.

Some examples of work the team is doing

• Building Roachdev Cloud, a cloud-based AI agent harness integrated with our internal development systems.
• Building a CLI tool for Cloud engineers to simplify common development workflows.
• Building a self-service system to manage GitHub repository admin access via a JIT admin model.
• Standing up new build processes and CI infrastructure needed to ship IBM S390x support for CockroachDB.

The ideal candidate has deep build-systems experience (Bazel in particular), a strong interest in applying automation and AI tooling to engineering problems, and enough breadth to move between developer tooling (both CLI and web-based), CI systems, and cloud infrastructure as the work demands.
You Will

• Learn engineers' daily workflows across the org and identify ways to increase productivity and reduce friction through new tools and processes.
• Maintain the health and performance of our CI system.
• Provide direct, service-minded support to engineers using our systems.
• Build developer infrastructure tools, primarily in Go and Typescript.

The Expectations

First month: You'll onboard as a member of the Developer Infrastructure team, learning how Cockroach Labs works across departments and how our DB and Cloud Engineering teams operate. You'll start with small, well-scoped tasks before taking on a larger starter project, with the goal of gaining exposure to a breadth of systems.

Second month: You'll take on your first medium-sized project, partnering with one or more engineers to develop a plan and deliver it.

By month three: You'll be a fully contributing team member, having owned and shipped one or more medium-sized projects, with enough familiarity to propose and scope new work and support other engineers on our development tools.
You Have

• Deep, hands-on experience with Bazel: designing and maintaining complex build processes, not just using Bazel day to day.
• A desire to make other engineers more productive, you think of engineers as your customers.
• Curiosity and willingness to learn unfamiliar tools and systems quickly.
• Strong communication skills and a collaborative, service-oriented mindset.
• Cloud infrastructure experience on GCP or AWS.
• Experience with CI/CD pipelines (with Bazel, TeamCity, GitHub Actions, Webpack, etc.).
• Strong experience with agentic AI development tools (Claude Code, Cursor).
• Go programming and web development experience.
• A BS in Computer Science or equivalent experience.

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 U.S. candidates for this role is listed in USD below. Salary is one component of the Cockroach Labs' Total Rewards package, which also includes, for each employee: stock options, medical insurance, vision insurance, dental insurance, life and disability insurance, funds towards professional development resources, flexible paid time off, 11 paid holidays a year, 10 paid sick days a year, paid parental leave, a 401(k) plan, and wellbeing benefits.

We set standard ranges for all U.S.-based roles based on function, level, and geographic location, benchmarked against similar stage growth companies. 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.

Salaries for candidates outside the U.S. will vary based on local compensation structures.

This position will remain posted until filled. Applicants should apply via our Careers Page.

Annual Anticipated Base Salary Range (U.S)

$134,000-$221,000 USD