Escalation Engineer, Cloudflare
Zero Trust
Web performance and security platform
Be an early applicant
Web performance and security platform
1001+ employees
Be an early applicant
1001+ employees
Company mission
To help build a better Internet that is bold and ambitious.
Role
Who you are
- Solid understanding of Zero Trust principles and technologies such as:
- Identity and Access Management
- Endpoint Detection & Response
- Network Security / Microsegmentation
- Secure Web Gateway / Cloud Access Security Broker (CASB)
- 3-5 years of technical troubleshooting experience, preferably in technical support or system reliability engineering
- Excellent verbal and written communication skills, ability to disseminate clear and appropriate information to both business and technical audiences
- Able to manage multiple priorities, commitments, and projects
- You understand and have previous experience working with Identity and Access Management protocols and technologies (SSO, SAML, OAuth, Federation, SCIM, etc.)
- You understand and have previous experience supporting and troubleshooting multi-factor mechanisms (TOTP, SMS, FIDO, U2F, WebAuth, EMAIL, Push MFA, etc)
- We realize people do not fit into neat boxes. We are looking for curious and empathetic individuals who are committed to developing themselves and learning new skills, and we are ready to help you do that
Desirable
- Extensive technical support experience
- Expertise in troubleshooting application protocols (L7 - DNS, HTTP, etc)
- Expertise in troubleshooting network infrastructure (L3/L4)
- Expert with Linux command line tools (curl, dig, git, traceroute, mtr)
- Expert at analyzing data using tools like grafana, kibana, and SQL
- Able to clarify complex technical issues and coordinate efforts to resolve
- Able to identify and share/suggest process improvements
- Demonstrated leadership, prior mentoring experience
- Self-motivated, self-directed, strong relationship building, can positively influence the actions of others, team player
- Comfortable handling inbound and outbound customer calls
- You are familiar with Cloudflare Zero Trust products (Zero Trust / Access / Gateway / Tunnel, WARP client) and have a site actively using our platform
- You have a solid grasp of problem-solving with command line tools (dig / traceroute / curl / tcpdump)
- Familiarity with troubleshooting Windows, macOS, and Linux operating systems
- You are familiar with Apache, Nginx, IIS, and other web servers
- You have worked with PostgreSQL, MySQL, MS SQL or other database servers
What the job involves
- The Customer Support Team solves complicated problems and answers technical inquiries via phone, email, chat, and social media
- Whether it is a WordPress blogger using our services for free or a global Enterprise business with petabytes of web traffic, our team is always eager to assist
- We are the eyes and ears of Cloudflare, acting as the real-time voice of the customer to help communicate their needs and real-world use cases back to the rest of the company - to help build a better service and future product development
- The Cloudflare Escalation Engineer is a technical resource within support responsible for owning and resolving the most complex customer escalations
- This role partners closely with Technical Support Engineers, proactively swarms on challenging cases, and provides hands-on guidance to accelerate issue resolution
- Escalation Engineers lead deep technical investigations across the full stack, isolate and reproduce defects, and ensure accurate, timely communication throughout the escalation lifecycle
- While they collaborate with Engineering and Product teams as needed, their primary focus is empowering the support organization, improving customer reliability, and driving high-quality outcomes for escalated customers
- They contribute critical insights, document new knowledge, and help shape processes and readiness that strengthen the overall support experience
- Advanced Troubleshooting & Root Cause Analysis:
- Investigate the most complex, high-impact customer issues escalated from front-line support (TSEs) and directly raised by customers
- Perform deep-dive debugging across the full technology stack application, database, infrastructure, APIs, and integrations
- Serve as a subject matter expert in supporting Zero Trust technologies such as identity and access management (IAM), secure access service edge (SASE), endpoint security, and network segmentation tools
- Troubleshoot complex technical issues across a broad set of systems including authentication flows (SSO, MFA), policy enforcement, and secure application access
- Use logs, traces, diagnostics to identify the underlying cause
- Work with Engineering to validate defects, create reproducible scenarios, and confirm fixes
- Provide coverage (shift rotation including possibility of weekends and Pacific Time hours) for technical troubleshooting of escalated issues
- Cross-Functional Escalation Management:
- Manage escalation lifecycle from intake to closure, ensuring technical accuracy and timely communication
- Partner with Product and Engineering teams to drive bug fixes or workarounds
- Communicate status, risk, and resolution progress clearly to support leaders and customers (as appropriate)
- Swarming & Collaboration with Support Teams:
- Proactively swarm on critical or complex cases with Technical Support Engineers within their regional or skill-based Pod
- Provide real-time guidance and mentoring during troubleshooting
- Be an expert engineer in the team, help front-line engineers improve their technical depth and escalation readiness
- Knowledge Creation & Enablement:
- Document new findings, diagnostic steps, and resolutions in internal knowledge bases
- Share insights from escalations to improve product documentation and support training
- Contribute to runbooks and automation that help prevent future escalations
- Readiness & Product Expertise:
- Stay current with new product releases, architecture changes, and known issues
- Participate in engineering syncs or release readiness reviews to represent the support perspective
- Serve as a subject matter expert (SME) in one or more technical domains
Our take
Cloudflare is a multi-service global network that provides web security and infrastructure, DDoS mitigation services, and a content delivery network. Founded in 2009, Cloudflare has risen to become an industry giant, with over 25 million global internet properties on its network.
Cloudflare has been responsible for a number of admirable initiatives, offering free web protection to human rights groups, journalists, artists, and US election websites. This goes some way to counteracting the flak Cloudflare has received in some circles for the controversial groups and users who use its services. This chequered history, however, has not affected its over 80% market share in the content delivery network field.
This is perhaps in part because it has proven sharp at staying abreast of the rapidly morphing tech and digital space and customer demands. For example, Cloudflare is shifting to 100% renewable energy usage to create a zero-emissions internet, and in 2020 released a feature that would help users navigate data privacy regulations by selecting where their data is stored.
And impressive third-quarter 2025 results show strong momentum, with revenue rising to $562 million from $430 million a year earlier. The company also raised its full-year guidance, underscoring confidence in continued growth. As demand for secure, cloud-based infrastructure keeps growing, Cloudflare's expanding platform and improving efficiency leave it well positioned to capture further gains in a rapidly growing market.
Steph
Company Specialist at Welcome to the Jungle
Insights
16% employee growth in 12 months
Company
Company benefits
- Take-what-you-need vacation: We encourage employees to find a comfortable work-life balance by taking as many days off as they need while still being able to perform their jobs satisfactorily. (We really mean it!)
- Paid maternity & paternity leave: Our global parental leave policy allows up to sixteen paid weeks of bonding leave time for all qualifying new parents.
- Employee benefits: We offer a comprehensive benefits package including healthcare, life insurance, short- and long-term disability, pension plans in accordance with the market practice in our locations.
- Commuter program: We are flexible about where we work and value connecting at the office. Our commuter benefits program is in place to support team members' commute to work via public transportation without the extra cost burden.
- Wellbeing: Global offerings that provide mental health, childcare and family forming support to our employees across our offices.
Company HQ
China Basin, San Francisco, CA
Leadership
Lee Holloway
(Co-Founder & Lead Engineer)Lee began their career as an Engineer at Homewarehouse for a year before working at Unspam Technologies for 4 years. They co-created Project Honey Pot in 2004 and Cloudflare in March 2009, serving as Lead Engineer of both to present.
Michelle Zatlyn
(Co-Founder, President & Co-Chair)Having worked for Investor Economics and I Love Rewards for a combined 4 years, Michelle worked at Toshiba for 3 years as a Product Manager. She then co-founded Cloudflare in 2009 as COO, and has served as President since 2020. She is also a Board Member at Atlassian.
Matthew Prince
(Co-Founder & CEO)Matthew studied for an MBA at Harvard Business School before co-founding Unspam Technologies in December 2001, and Cloudflare in 2009, where he has served as CEO ever since.
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