About Cockroach Labs
What is Cockroach Labs?
Cockroach Labs is the company behind CockroachDB, a cloud-native distributed SQL database designed for applications that need to scale globally with strict consistency. The mission, in the company's own words: "simplify how businesses build and operate world-changing applications." CockroachDB is built to handle the workloads — payments, banking, gaming, ad tech, identity, e-commerce — where downtime and data loss are not acceptable, and it's used by companies across financial services, gaming, manufacturing, media and SaaS.
Founded in 2015 and headquartered in New York City, Cockroach Labs has grown into a mature distributed-database business. The Series F round in 2021 brought total funding to ~$633M at a $5B valuation, with investors including Greenoaks, Benchmark, Coatue, GV, Index Ventures, J.P. Morgan, and Tiger Global.
Where will I work?
Cockroach Labs operates a hybrid work model with offices in New York City (125 W 25th St) and San Mateo, CA. The JD describes it verbatim: "Roachers that are local to one of our offices coming in on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays and working flexibly the rest of the week." Most roles are tied to a specific office (NYC, San Mateo, or — for some functions — Global remote with a hub-commutable requirement, e.g. the UK Account Executive role requires London-office commutability).
What is the Cockroach Labs team like?
The careers page sets out three guiding cultural pillars: "Be a leader" (innovation, execution, customer focus regardless of title), "Good ideas come from everyone" (best-idea-wins discussions with respect and humility), and "Collaborate" (open communication across teams). Employee Resource Groups, called CREWS (Cockroach Employees Who Support), include AsianPI at CRL, Women at Cockroach Labs, Roacher Pride, and Black at CRL.
Senior engineer testimonial verbatim: "The team is made up of truly world-class talent—smart, skilled, and yet very humble" (Babu Srithar, Senior Director, Engineering).
Work-Life Balance
Cockroach Labs operates on a "Flex Fridays" framework: hybrid Roachers come in to the office Mon/Tue/Thu and work flexibly Wed/Fri. The intent, per the careers page's schedule description, is for Friday to be a day to "self-manage and grow in whatever way you choose - whether that is working, learning or resting." Time off is "flexible PTO" with separate buckets for paid sick days and paid holidays.
Perks and Benefits
Confirmed from Cockroach Labs's careers page and active JDs:
- Flexible PTO + paid sick days + paid holidays
- Paid parental leave
- Medical, vision and dental insurance
- Life and disability insurance
- Mental wellbeing benefits
- Stock options
- Retirement benefits (401(k))
- Professional development funds
- Employee referral bonus + relocation support
Built In NYC supplementary data references 12-week parental leave, $500 Baby Bucks, and One Medical / virtual therapy, but these are NOT corroborated by Cockroach Labs's own careers page or sampled JDs and are excluded from this profile per primary-source rigor.