Job description

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 We're looking for a Staff Product Marketing Manager to own the Onboard & Build stage of the customer lifecycle — the moment a developer (or their agent) first meets CockroachDB and decides whether to build on it. It's the front door of our entire go-to-market motion: if we don't win here, nothing downstream matters. You'll own four connected user journeys end-to-end — Activation to Collaboration, Data Onboarding & Enablement, Developer Experiences, and Programmability & Extensibility — as a single, coherent stage rather than four disconnected pieces. That's deliberate: the developer's path from “curious” to “building in production” should feel like one story, and you're the person who makes it one. This is a senior, high-ownership role. You'll set the positioning, build the messaging, and drive the enablement and content for how developers adopt CockroachDB — including the AI-native patterns increasingly defining this stage: agent-driven discovery, MCP and agent-facing surfaces, and the reality that coding agents themselves now evaluate and choose databases. You'll sit inside Product Marketing & DevRel within the R&D organization, close to engineering and on the roadmap early enough to shape the story, not just narrate it. Below are the journeys you will own: Activation to Collaboration. The front line of the agentic strategy — how developers and their coding agents discover, evaluate, and choose CockroachDB. If an agent doesn't pick us at activation, nothing downstream happens; you own making sure we're the obvious choice. Data Onboarding & Enablement. The migration and onboarding story — how teams move off legacy databases and get to production, including the AI Migration Assistant and the MOLT tooling that de-risks the path. Developer Experiences. The end-to-end developer experience — quickstarts, docs, sample apps, and the surfaces that turn first-touch curiosity into a running application. Programmability & Extensibility. How developers extend and build on CockroachDB — the interfaces, integrations, and capabilities (SQL Server design partnerships, Dynamic SQL, and more) that make it a platform, not just a database. You Will Positioning & messaging for the stage. Build the message house for Onboard & Build — the value propositions, proof points, and narrative that make developers choose and stay. Keep all four journeys laddering to one coherent story and to the broader company positioning. Launch & GTM execution. Own the PMM deliverables for launches touching your journeys — messaging, enablement, content, and field readiness — mapped to the GTM readiness plan and shipped on time. You move fast once positioning locks. Field & sales enablement. Arm the field to sell the onboarding and developer story — first-call decks, objection handling, competitive framing, and the pitch reps carry — partnering with the enablement team on delivery. The AI-native adoption story. Own how the agentic era shows up at this stage: agent-driven discovery, agents as a first-class audience, and the message that CockroachDB is where developers and their agents build. Turn it into proof, not just positioning. Cross-functional partnership. Work hand-in-glove with the PMs for each journey, with DevRel, docs, and demand gen — translating what's shipping into what the market hears, and bringing developer reality back into the roadmap. Proof and content. Drive the case studies, reference stories, and technical content that make the onboarding and build story credible — grounded in real customer outcomes, not claims. The Expectations In your first 30 days, you'll go deep on the product and the four journeys, meet the PMs and cross-functional partners you'll work with, and audit the existing positioning, messaging, and content across Onboard & Build for gaps and quick wins. By 60 days, you'll have a clear point of view on where the stage's story is strong and where it's thin, shipped your first messaging or enablement deliverable, and begun driving one of the four journeys end-to-end. By 90 days, you'll own the full Onboard & Build narrative — a coherent message house across all four journeys, active field enablement, and a working partnership with the journey PMs feeding the roadmap. You Have 8+ years in product marketing, with a track record of owning positioning, messaging, and launches for technical products — ideally databases, developer tools, data infrastructure, or cloud platforms (Staff level; senior candidates with exceptional depth considered). Genuine technical fluency. You can hold a real conversation with developers and PMs about distributed systems, databases, and how software gets built — and translate it into messaging that's both accurate and compelling. You don't fake the technical depth; you have it. Fluency in the AI-native developer world. You understand how developers build with LLMs and agents today — RAG, vector search, agent memory, MCP, agent-driven workflows — and can position data infrastructure credibly within it. A clear, opinionated point of view. You bring a strong PMM perspective and defend it with evidence. You'd rather challenge a weak positioning than execute it quietly, and you know how to disagree constructively. Sharp technical storytelling. You turn capability into meaning — “online schema changes” becomes “ship changes with zero downtime” — and you make the developer's life the center of the story. Bias for decision-ready output. You produce concise, high-quality work under real deadlines, flag decisions inline, and don't pad. You work fast when the direction is clear. Cross-functional gravity. You earn trust with PMs, engineers, sales, and DevRel, and you make the story better by pulling their reality into it. The Team Reporting to the Head of Product Marketing, you'll join a small, high-leverage PMM team inside the broader Product organization. Product Marketing at Cockroach Labs means you work with everyone — sales, sales enablement, solution engineering, product management, demand generation, and beyond. We like it that way: this team shapes the growth vector of the company every day. 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 accessibility@cockroachlabs.com . 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) $158,000 — $208,900 USD

Requirements

Must-haves

Category-defining tech. Career-defining work.
Data Onboarding & Enablement. The migration and onboarding story — how teams move off legacy databases and get to production, including the AI Migration Assistant and the MOLT tooling that de-risks the path.
Developer Experiences. The end-to-end developer experience — quickstarts, docs, sample apps, and the surfaces that turn first-touch curiosity into a running application.
Proof and content. Drive the case studies, reference stories, and technical content that make the onboarding and build story credible — grounded in real customer outcomes, not claims.
The Expectations
By 60 days, you'll have a clear point of view on where the stage's story is strong and where it's thin, shipped your first messaging or enablement deliverable, and begun driving one of the four journeys end-to-end.
By 90 days, you'll own the full Onboard & Build narrative — a coherent message house across all four journeys, active field enablement, and a working partnership with the journey PMs feeding the roadmap.
A clear, opinionated point of view. You bring a strong PMM perspective and defend it with evidence. You'd rather challenge a weak positioning than execute it quietly, and you know how to disagree constructively.
Sharp technical storytelling. You turn capability into meaning — “online schema changes” becomes “ship changes with zero downtime” — and you make the developer's life the center of the story.
Bias for decision-ready output. You produce concise, high-quality work under real deadlines, flag decisions inline, and don't pad. You work fast when the direction is clear.
Cross-functional gravity. You earn trust with PMs, engineers, sales, and DevRel, and you make the story better by pulling their reality into it.

Nice-to-haves

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Benefits

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Dental

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401(K)

Paid Time Off

Parental Leave

Professional Development