Hi, I'm Andy Woods

Director of Product Management at Cockroach Labs | Building at the intersection of distributed systems and AI

I lead product strategy for CockroachDB's application ecosystem integrations, pricing, and AI initiatives. Over the past decade, I've scaled CockroachDB from pre-revenue to $100M+ ARR and category leadership, while maintaining hands-on technical skills through building production AI systems and analyzing thousands of product signals monthly. I'm passionate about making complex technology accessible to developers, whether it's distributed systems or generative AI.

📝 Recent Writing

• The Architect-Builder Pattern: A Production Workflow for AI Development - Nov 10, 2025
• How I Built My Blog: Why I Use Different AI Models for Architecture vs Implementation - Oct 21, 2025
• Surviving Failures: Disaster Recovery with CockroachDB - Apr 9, 2025
• Surviving Large-Scale Failures with CockroachDB - Mar 27, 2025
• Surviving 11 Application and Database Failures with CockroachDB - Mar 17, 2025

Latest posts from andywoods.me

🤖 Current Focus

Building production AI systems with LLMs, RAG architectures, and vector databases. Exploring the intersection of AI infrastructure and developer tools.

🚀 What I'm Building

• AI-powered product analytics - Using LLMs to surface insights from 10K+ monthly product signals
• RAG systems - Production implementations with Claude, GPT-4, and vector search
• Database AI integrations - Connecting CockroachDB with modern AI stacks
• CockroachDB product strategy - Leading ecosystem integrations, pricing & packaging, and AI product initiatives

💼 Background

I'm a product leader who stays technical and in the details. With 10+ years in product development and an MBA from Kellogg, I bridge the gap between technical complexity and business impact. My background spans distributed infrastructure, cloud service provider integrations, and AI/ML systems. I analyze product signals using SQL and Python, build prototypes to validate ideas, and evaluate strategic partnerships.

🛠️ Technical Stack

• AI/ML: Claude, GPT-5, Gemini, LangChain, RAG, Vector Databases (CockroachDB pgvector)
• Data: Python, SQL, PostgreSQL, CockroachDB, pandas
• Cloud: AWS, Azure, GCP
• Product: A/B testing, analytics, instrumentation, product-led growth

📊 Impact

• Revenue Growth: Scaled CockroachDB from pre-revenue to $100M+ ARR and category leadership
• AI Innovation: Led company's first AI product initiative, built production systems with GPT-4 and Claude
• Data-Driven Product: Analyze 10,000+ monthly product signals to inform strategy and investment planning
• Strategic Partnerships: Evaluated and managed partnerships with major cloud providers and AI platforms

📈 Activity

This profile is automatically updated daily with my latest blog posts via GitHub Actions.