Cockroach Labs application questions — all 42, word for word
Cockroach Labs hires through Greenhouse. Beyond name, email and CV, its application form asks 42 questions, 27 of them required. 1 of them is a required, fixed-choice question about your eligibility to work. A cover letter is optional.
35 roles were open when this was last checked, mostly in engineering and sales. The questions below are the form's own wording, not a paraphrase.
What Cockroach Labs has open
These are the roles the form was read from, as Cockroach Labs titles them, in New York, NY, Bangalore, India, Remote, Singapore, London, UK:
- Deal Desk Manager, AMER
- Join our Talent Community!
- Manager, Engineering (Production Orchestration)
- Marketing Operations Manager
- Member of Technical Staff (Disaster Recovery)
- Member of Technical Staff (Performance Engineering)
- Member of Technical Staff (Production Services)
- Member of Technical Staff (Senior - Specialized Indexing)
- Member of Technical Staff (Storage)
- Member of Technical Staff (Test Engineering)
- Regional Sales Director, Central AMER
- Revenue Operations Specialist, EMEA
38 of the questions below are ones at most two of the 212 employers measured ask (median: 13), the least standard being “Have you successfully sold database technologies or closely related infrastructure products (cloud platforms, data infrastructure, distributed systems, observability, DevOps, middleware, data platforms) into enterprise customers?”.
The eligibility questions
These are required, and answered from a fixed list rather than in your own words: work authorisation, visa sponsorship or security clearance. Employers often use questions like these to filter applications automatically, but Greenhouse's public data does not say whether Cockroach Labs does — so treat them as the answers most likely to matter, not as a verdict. Answer them honestly either way.
| Question | Answers accepted |
|---|---|
| Are you currently based in Singapore and legally authorized to work in Singapore without requiring employer sponsorship now or in the future? required, fixed choice | Yes, No |
Every question on the form
| Question | Type | Required |
|---|---|---|
| Are you currently based in Singapore and legally authorized to work in Singapore without requiring employer sponsorship now or in the future? Yes, No |
select | Yes |
| First Name | text | Yes |
| Last Name | text | Yes |
| Preferred First Name | text | No |
| text | Yes | |
| Phone | text | Yes |
| Resume/CV | file | Yes |
| Cover Letter | file | No |
| LinkedIn Profile: | text | No |
| Please confirm that you are based in Singapore. Yes, No |
select | Yes |
| How did you first hear about Cockroach Labs? Built In, Campus Event, Company Website, Facebook, Github, Glassdoor (+3 more) |
select | Yes |
| What was the largest influence on your decision to apply? Benefits & Perks, Company leadership, Company vision/mission, Culture/Values, Employer brand, The product (+1 more) |
select | Yes |
| Have you been employed by Cockroach Labs in the past? Yes, No |
select | Yes |
| What are your salary expectations? | text | No |
| What additional accommodations do you need to feel comfortable during your interview process? All responses will be kept private. | textarea | No |
| Are you proficient in Mandarin? Yes, No |
select | Yes |
| Have you successfully sold database technologies or closely related infrastructure products (cloud platforms, data infrastructure, distributed systems, observability, DevOps, middleware, data platforms) into enterprise customers? Yes – Direct database sales experience, Yes – Adjacent infrastructure/platform technology sales experience, No |
select | Yes |
| Have you successfully sold enterprise technology solutions into Financial Services institutions or large conglomerates? Yes – Closed multiple deals, Limited exposure, No |
select | Yes |
| Website / GitHub: | text | No |
| You are located in NYC and understand our weekly in-office expectation of Monday, Tuesday & Thursday. Yes, No |
select | Yes |
| What do you enjoy most about Deal Desk? | textarea | Yes |
| Please confirm you live near our [OFFICE_LOCATION] office location and understand the in-office expectation of Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays. Yes, No |
select | Yes |
| LinkedIn Profile | text | No |
| Website / Github | text | No |
| Please confirm you live near our New York City office location and understand the in-office expectation of Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays. | text | Yes |
| Are you legally authorized to work in the country where the job is located? | text | Yes |
| Please confirm you live near our Austin, TX office location and understand the in-office expectation of Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays. Yes, No |
select | Yes |
| What type of role are you interested in? G&A - Finance, G&A - Legal, G&A - People, Marketing - Content, Marketing - Creative, Marketing - Demand Generation (+15 more) |
select | Yes |
| Where are you currently located? | text | No |
| Where is your desired work location (if different than current location)? | text | No |
| Would you like to opt into receiving occasional content from the People team? Yes, No |
select | Yes |
| How many years of hands-on experience do you have in SRE, Production Engineering, or a closely related discipline (e.g., Platform Engineering, Infrastructure Engineering)? Less than 2 years, 2–4 years, 5–8 years, 8+ years |
select | No |
| Have you directly managed a team of software or infrastructure engineers (i.e., held formal people management responsibility including performance reviews, career development, and day-to-day coaching)? Yes, No, Not officially but have worked in a pseudo management role |
select | No |
| Which of the following best describes your experience with distributed systems, cloud infrastructure, or large-scale fleet management? I have no meaningful experience in any of these areas, I have academic or theoretical knowledge but limited production exposure, I have worked in a production environment using one or more of these (cloud infra, container orchestration, distributed systems, or fleet management), I have led engineering teams that owned one or more of these areas in production |
select | No |
| How many years of experience do you have leading or participating in production incident response at scale (e.g., on-call rotations, incident command, post-mortems)? I have not had this responsibility, Less than 2 years, 2–4 years, 4+ years |
select | No |
| Please confirm you live near our New York office location and understand the in-office expectation of Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays. Yes, No |
select | Yes |
| How many years of professional software engineering experience do you have? Fewer than 3 years, 3–4 years, 5–7 years, 8 years or more, Auto-Reject Rule: Selected "Fewer than 3 years" OR "3–4 years" |
select | Yes |
| Do you have professional or significant project experience writing software in Go and/or Python? Yes – Go only, Yes – Python only, Yes – both Go and Python, No – I have experience in other languages but not Go or Python |
select | Yes |
| Have you personally built software that integrates LLMs or AI agents? (e.g., prompt engineering, evals, tool-calling agents, RAG pipelines, AI-powered developer tooling) Yes – shipped to production or as a core part of a real-world project, Yes – built hands-on in a personal, side, or academic project, No – I have theoretical or academic knowledge only, but have not built with LLMs, No – I have no experience with LLMs or AI agents |
select | Yes |
| Which of the following have you worked with directly, in a professional or project context? GitHub REST or GraphQL API, GitHub Actions (writing or maintaining workflows), Building or extending a GitHub App or Bot, GitHub Webhooks, None of the above |
select | Yes |
| Which best describes your experience with CI/CD systems (e.g., GitHub Actions, TeamCity, Jenkins, CircleCI)? Yes – I have built, configured, or actively debugged CI/CD pipelines, Yes – I have used CI/CD systems but only as a consumer (e.g., triggered builds, read logs), No – I have limited or no experience with CI/CD systems |
select | Yes |
| Please confirm you live near our New York, NY office location and understand the in-office expectation of Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays. Yes, No |
select | Yes |
| Is there anything additional you'd like us to know that was not already shared as part of this application? [optional] | textarea | No |
| Is there anything additional you'd like us to know that was not already covered in your application? [optional] | textarea | No |
| Please confirm you live near our Toronto or New York City office location and understand the in-office expectation of Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays. Yes, No |
select | Yes |
| Are you looking to work out of our Toronto or New York City Office? Toronto, New York City |
select | Yes |
| Is there anything additional you'd like us to know that was not already included in this application? [optional] | textarea | No |
| Please confirm you live near our Bangalore, India office location and understand the in-office expectation of Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays. Yes, No |
select | Yes |
| Walk me through your experience with database internals. Benefits & Perks, Company leadership, Company vision/mission, Culture/Values, Employer brand, The product (+1 more) |
select | Yes |
What it's really asking about
Grouped by what each question is for, so you can prepare the answers that repeat across employers.
| Topic | Questions |
|---|---|
| Other | 24 |
| Remote or on-site | 8 |
| Portfolio and links | 4 |
| Years of experience | 3 |
| Salary expectations | 1 |
| Visa sponsorship | 1 |
| Work authorisation | 1 |
What other employers ask
The same question rarely comes out the same way twice. These employers' forms are measured the same way, from their own job boards:
Doximity · Dropbox · Elastic · Enova International · Eve · Fastly
Before you apply
Have the answers to the required questions ready before you open the form — Cockroach Labs's asks for 27 of them, and Greenhouse does not save a partial application by default. Settle the eligibility questions first — they are the ones with no room to elaborate, so knowing your answer before you start tells you whether the rest of the form is worth your time.