Connecting the Data Dots: How Isaac Wong Leads R&D at Cockroach Labs

When Isaac Wong talks about building systems, he puts people before servers or code. A mathematician turned engineering leader, Wong is constantly connecting abstract theory with real-world resilience. Today, as Executive Vice President of R&D at Cockroach Labs, he leads teams shaping one of the world’s most advanced distributed databases.

His fascination with systems took root during his 16 years at Medidata Solutions, where he helped the company scale from a small startup to a major life sciences platform. There, he went down the proverbial rabbit hole of databases and distributed systems. His teams ran MySQL, SQL Server, Oracle, and Redshift, managing a constellation of services and applications that exposed him to the complex architectures behind large-scale data management. 

The deeper they built, the more he became intrigued by how these systems were designed to solve hard problems. A research paper on topology and distributed systems caught his attention around this time, and with his mathematical mindset, that was the moment that sealed the deal.

That curiosity (and a timely connection) eventually led Wong to Cockroach Labs, where the company’s technology and culture immediately struck a chord. “I liked the deep technical work at the crossroads of some very hard problems: distributed systems, databases, and OLTP,” he says. “I was drawn to the challenge of putting it in production and being around people solving these complex problems at scale.”

From Math to Microservices: How to Build Systems That Connect

When Wong discusses his day-to-day at Cockroach Labs, his analytical mindset quickly comes through. As Executive Vice President of R&D, he oversees engineering, product, education, and product marketing -- however, he describes his real role as connecting talented people around a shared purpose so that the whole organization becomes more than the sum of its parts.

That systems-driven approach traces back to his early training, where he learned how simple elements can combine into something far more complex, and how connections between seemingly unrelated pieces can reveal something entirely new. "The parts I enjoyed most about math were how simple things can combine into something much more complex,” he says, “and how the connections between disparate subjects can reveal something entirely different."

That convergence of people, systems, and purpose mirrors CockroachDB’s design philosophy: best practices elegantly combined in a leading distributed database that’s resilient, and scalable for on-prem, cloud, multi-cloud, or hybrid. 

RELATED: CockroachDB Turns Ten: Scaling the Future of Relational Databases

What is the role of CockroachDB in AI-Driven Development? 

In an era where AI dominates every conversation, Wong keeps his team focused on fundamentals: data integrity, reliability, and scale. "Accurate, consistent, and available data at scale is more important than ever,” he says. “Data is what AI is built on. CockroachDB is an OLTP database, and that data can be used for training. Ensuring that data is accurate means AI is more accurate."

Wong sees CockroachDB emerging as a critical component of application architectures. Its powerful combination of vector search and distributed SQL helps ensure that applications, whether they’re AI-powered or powering AI, never go down and can scale alongside today’s data-powered economy. “Data is the raw material that describes businesses and their workflows,” he says. “CockroachDB is a critical component for housing and processing that data."

He sees continuity where others might see disruption. "I think the role of CockroachDB in AI-driven application development is relatively unchanged: Data still needs to be reliably persisted, manipulated, and integrated at scale. CockroachDB can run AI workflows and help consolidate your database estate by housing vectors and transactional data together. It integrates with your data platform as a good citizen, agents can access data through SQL APIs, and so on."

The way Wong sees it, the fundamentals haven't changed. AI simply raises the stakes on getting them right. "The pattern is similar whether you're building AI or non-AI applications,” he adds. “Write data. Read data. Keep it accurate and consistent. All with low latency and at scale. Of course, CockroachDB must be easy for AI-native applications to interface with or build on, but AI-native applications still need consistency, resilience, scale, and locality."

Related: Vector Search Meets Distributed SQL: A New Blueprint for AI-Ready Data

Leading through scale: How do you empower database R&D teams to move fast and stay aligned?

When it comes to database evolution, the fundamentals of AI-powered development are paramount. A solid foundation enables customer centricity, small batch sizes, fast lead times, and rapid feedback that fuels design, communication, and collaboration across R&D teams.

Wong sees how AI is empowering engineers, emphasizing the need for autonomy, context, clear goals, and the safety net of a powerful quality platform. When those pieces are in place, teams can move fast, independently, and with alignment. He believes that scale springs from acing the basics: Do all the small things right and the big wins will follow.

For Wong, speed only matters when it’s grounded in understanding. Engineers still need a deep grasp of how databases and distributed systems function, and they must be able to articulate that knowledge to one another and to AI systems. “AI doesn’t change the fundamentals,” he says. “It just makes them more critical than ever.”

The road ahead: A Cambrian explosion of creativity 

For Isaac Wong, there’s never been a better time to be a part of CockroachDB, which for 10+ years has played a pioneering role in making distributed SQL a game-changer for data architects. "I'm excited about numerous things on the product roadmap,” he says. “The Cockroach Labs R&D team is amazing, and the highlight of my job is being around all this creativity and watching people build amazing things."

Better still, he gets to do all this within the database industry, a sector that he sees in the midst of a very exciting era. “There's so much innovation happening everywhere,” Wong says. “From hardware to networking to operating systems to database design and architecture, it's a Cambrian explosion of creativity."

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David Weiss is Senior Technical Content Marketer for Cockroach Labs. In addition to data, his deep content portfolio includes cloud, SaaS, cybersecurity, and crypto/blockchain.