Senior Software Engineer, Deploy at Scale

At Cloudflare we are on a mission to help build a better Internet. Today the company runs one of the worlds largest networks that powers millions of websites and other Internet properties for customers ranging from individual bloggers to SMBs to Fortune 500 companies. Cloudflare protects and accelerates any Internet application online without adding hardware installing software or changing a line of code. Internet properties powered by Cloudflare all have web traffic routed through its intelligent global network which gets smarter with every request. As a result they see significant improvement in performance and a decrease in spam and other attacks. Cloudflare was named to Entrepreneur Magazines Top Company Cultures list and ranked among the Worlds Most Innovative Companies by Fast Company.

At Cloudflare were not looking for people who wait for a polished roadmap; were looking for the builders who see the cracks in the Internet that everyone else has simply learned to live with. We value candidates who have the instinct to spot a normalized problem and the AI-native curiosity to create a solution using the latest tools. Our culture is built on iteration leveraging AI to ship faster today to make it better tomorrow while ensuring that every improvement no matter how small is shared across the team to lift everyone up. If youre the type of person who values curiosity over bureaucracy and that AI is a partner in solving tough problems to keep the Internet moving forward youll fit right in.

Location: Austin TX (US) London (UK)

Cloudflares Infrastructure Team builds and runs the systems and software that support our solutions that handle trillions of requests per month. We ensure that all of the new and existing features and functionality that Cloudflare offers can be managed at scale and meet the needs of our massively growing global customer base.

About the role

As a Senior Software Engineer in the team you will provide technical leadership for the platform that powers safe reliable and automated deployments across Cloudflare. This is a senior IC role: you will set technical direction across multiple work streams not just execute within one.

Youll be expected to operate with significant autonomy - identifying the right problems to solve driving architecture decisions that will hold up over multiple years and influencing how dozens of engineering teams across Cloudflare think about safe change. You will partner directly with your EM and leadership to shape the multi-quarter roadmap and youll be a primary technical voice in cross-team design reviews RFCs and incident retrospectives that touch deployment safety.

Youll spend meaningful time unblocking and elevating the rest of the team: reviewing designs before they become code pairing on the hardest problems and raising the technical bar through mentorship - without needing to be a people manager to do it. Youll be defining what the platform is deciding what not to build and making the tradeoffs which ensure the system is safe fast and scalable five years from now.

Where were heading

• From human-in-the-loop to machine-in-the-loop: fully automated health-mediated deployments as the default at hundreds of thousands of releases a day.
• Consolidating a fragmented landscape:unifying release orchestration health mediation feature flagging and configuration rollback into one coherent platform.
• AI as a first-class part of the platform: youll help define where and how AI assists both the platform and the humans operating it.

This is a unique opportunity to work on complex globally distributed systems that underpin every Cloudflare product. You will play a key role in advancing the infrastructure that enables fast safe delivery of changes to production directly impacting the reliability and velocity ofCloudflares global will collaborate with the team to understand business needs and develop technical solutions working closely with internal customers to turn their workflows into platform capabilities. You will thrive in a fast-paced iterative engineering environment with short release cycles.

This role may require flexibility to be on-call outside of standard working hours to address technical issues as needed.

Examples of desirable skills knowledge and experience

• 8 years of hands-on software engineering experience including a track record of owning the architecture of complex distributed production-critical systems end to end.
• Demonstrated technical leadership beyond your own code: driving RFCs and design reviews that other senior engineers and teams rely on and being sought out as a technical escalation point.
• Judgment for ambiguity comfortable defining the problem and the roadmap not just the solution in an environment where requirements are not fully specified upfront.
• Deep experience with safety observability and automation in production systems: designing rollback paths health signals and guardrails that other systems and teams build on top of.
• Experience influencing technical direction across team boundaries through architecture mentorship or platform APIs/contracts without direct authority.
• Comfort operating in a fast-moving environment with AI as a working tool: fluent use of AI-assisted development critical evaluation of its output and a point of view on where it should and shouldnt be trusted in a safety-critical system.
• Experience with workflow orchestration long-running/durable execution or large-scale distributed systems is a strong plus.
• Strong written and verbal communication this role requires writing docs and RFCs that persuade and align not just describe.

Bonus points

• Prior experience owning a deployment progressive delivery or change-management platform at scale.
• Experience leading a technical migration across many independent teams (e.g. a platform sunset/replacement).

This role is eligible to participate in Cloudflares equity plan.

Benefits

Cloudflare offers a complete package of benefits and programs to support you and your family. Our benefits programs can help you pay health care expenses support caregiving build capital for the future and make life a little easier and fun! The below is a description of our benefits for employees in the United States and benefits may vary for employees based outside the U.S.

Health & Welfare Benefits

• Medical/Rx Insurance
• Dental Insurance
• Vision Insurance
• Flexible Spending Accounts
• Commuter Spending Accounts
• Fertility & Family Forming Benefits
• On-demand mental health support and Employee Assistance Program
• Global Travel Medical Insurance

Financial Benefits

• Short and Long Term Disability Insurance
• Life & Accident Insurance
• 401(k) Retirement Savings Plan
• Employee Stock Participation Plan

Time Off

• Flexible paid time off covering vacation and sick leave
• Leave programs including parental pregnancy health medical and bereavement leave

Were not just a highly ambitious large-scale technology company. Were a highly ambitious large-scale technology company with a soul. Fundamental to our mission to help build a better Internet is protecting the free and open Internet.

Project Galileo: Since 2014 weve equipped more than 2400 journalism and civil society organizations in 111 countries with powerful tools to defend themselves against attacks that would otherwise censor their work technology already used by Cloudflares enterprise customers--at no cost.

Athenian Project: In 2017 we created the Athenian Project to ensure that state and local governments have the highest level of protection and reliability for free so that their constituents have access to election information and voter registration. Since the project weve provided services to more than 425 local government election websites in 33 states.

1.1.1.1: We released 1.1.1.1 to help fix the foundation of the Internet by building a faster more secure and privacy-centric public DNS resolver. This is available publicly for everyone to use - it is the first consumer-focused service Cloudflare has ever released. Heres the deal - we dont store client IP addresses never ever. We will continue to abide by our privacy commitment and ensure that no user data is sold to advertisers or used to target consumers.

Sound like something youd like to be a part of Wed love to hear from you!

Please note that applicants who progress to the offer stage of the interview process may be asked to attend an in-person interview within one of the Cloudflare Offices or Cloudflare Hubs. More details about this will be available at that stage of the interview process.

This position may require access to information protected under U.S. export control laws including the U.S. Export Administration Regulations. Please note that any offer of employment may be conditioned on your authorization to receive software or technology controlled under these U.S. export laws without sponsorship for an export license.

Cloudflare is proud to be an equal opportunity employer. We are committed to providing equal employment opportunity for all people and place great value in both diversity and inclusiveness. All qualified applicants will be considered for employment without regard to their or any other persons perceived or actual race color religion sex gender gender identity gender expression sexual orientation national origin ancestry citizenship age physical or mental disability medical condition family care status or any other basis protected by law. We are an AA/Veterans/Disabled Employer.

Cloudflare provides reasonable accommodations to qualified individuals with disabilities. Please tell us if you require a reasonable accommodation to apply for a job. Examples of reasonable accommodations include but are not limited to changing the application process providing documents in an alternate format using a sign language interpreter or using specialized equipment. If you require a reasonable accommodation to apply for a job please contact us via e-mail at or via mail at 101 Townsend St. San Francisco CA 94107.