Sr. Engineering Manager, Key Value; KV

Category-defining tech. Career-defining work.

Lots of tech companies disrupt. But, many fail when they try to scale. We're different. Cockroach DB makes it easier for companies to build and scale apps. This is how and why we’re helping some of the most innovative companies on the planet. We tackle problems head‑on and focus on solutions that create lasting impact.

Every transaction Cockroach DB handles – billions a day, across global banks, payments networks, retailers, and SaaS platforms – moves through the Key Value (KV) layer of the database. This includes Cockroach DB’s distributed transaction protocol, its replication layer (which uses Raft consensus), and its data placement allocator. The primitives on top of which Cockroach DB is built.

You’ll lead the team that owns this layer: around ten engineers working across multiple time zones, working on the fundamentals behind many of the headline features in recent Cockroach DB releases – Leader Leases (a recent SIGMOD 2026 industry track paper), Buffered Writes, Read Committed transaction isolation. The KV team’s work is technically dense, broad in scope, and interfaces with essentially every other Engineering team at Cockroach Labs.

We’re looking for an experienced engineering manager who can keep a savvy engineering team aligned across a complex, deeply technical, multi‑project roadmap.

• Lead the team. Manage projects, coach engineers, run the performance and growth process, and hire to maintain the technical bar and culture as the team evolves.
• Drive the roadmap. Along with the team’s technical leads, 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.
• Be the connective tissue with the rest of Database Engineering org. KV sits at the center of our product. The storage layer sits below, SQL sits on top, Backup, Restore and Change feeds (CDC) move data through it. You’ll keep those interfaces healthy – technically and organizationally.
• Run a portfolio of highly technical projects. The team’s domain is broad and deep. You’ll keep several large, parallel projects on track without losing the technical details that matter.
• Represent the team externally. Tech talks, conferences, meetups, hackathons – showing the team’s work off to the broader database and distributed systems community.

• First 30 days. Embed in the team. Get to know each engineer, the technical sub‑domains (replication, transactions, distribution, resource management), 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 Cockroach DB’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 work streams 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. You’ve driven projects from prototype to production. Developed and coached engineers, driven promotions. Made tough decisions.
• Deep technical foundation. Ideally a background in databases or systems infrastructure (storage, compute, networking). You can hold your own in design discussions, push back on trade‑offs, and earn the respect of senior ICs. You don’t need to write code daily, but you’ll want to.
• High EQ. You build trust through empathy and consistency. You’re comfortable in the weeds when needed, and you don’t confuse leadership with distance from the work.
• Project management chops. You can keep multiple large, technically dense work streams moving in parallel, without micromanaging.
• Distributed‑team fluency. You’ve led teams across time zones and know how to make async work for high‑context engineering and knowledge work.
• Genuine interest in the domain.…