Principal Software Engineer, Cloudflare
Data
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
- 8+ years of experience as a software engineer with a focus on designing, building and scaling data infrastructure
- Proven experience leading technical initiatives in a cross-functional context, working with multiple stakeholders and driving value delivery
- Extensive experience with data infrastructure at scale, including tools like Trino, Spark, Iceberg/Delta Lake, Kafka, Clickhouse, PostgreSQL
- Experience designing, building and debugging data pipelines at scale
- Proficient using backend languages like Go, Python, Typescript, and Rust, along with SQL
- Excellent analytical skills, with a focus on understanding data and how stakeholders use it to drive value
- Strong communication skills, especially around articulating technical concepts for technical and non-technical audiences
- Experience creating and using agentic development workflows and an AI-first mentality
- 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
Desirable
- Experience with data orchestration and infrastructure platforms like Airflow and DBT
- Experience deploying and managing infrastructure in Kubernetes
- Experience with data governance platforms and processes, with a focus on privacy and auditability
- Knowledge about machine learning models and MLOps
What the job involves
- Cloudflare handles traffic for almost 25% of the Internet. That’s a lot of data. On the Town Lake team, our mission is to make that data accessible and valuable for users across the company. We connect data from dozens of source systems and make it available so that any user in the company can answer any question in 5 minutes or less, using SQL or plain english
- We’re building a modern, agentic-first data lakehouse platform based on Trino and Apache Iceberg, and all the supporting services for ingestion, transformation access control, governance, dashboarding and agentic access are built on Cloudflare's own platform. R2 and R2 Data Catalog for storage, Workers and Workers AI for compute, Workflows for orchestration, Durable Objects and D1 for state, Cloudflare Access for authentication
- This is a small but growing team already having an outsized and highly visible impact at the company. If you’re looking for an opportunity to make a splash, have a foundational say in a new, exciting and growing platform, and steer the direction on the frontier of data platforms, this team might be a good fit for you
- We are looking for an experienced, product-minded principal software engineer to help take Town Lake from a fast-growing internal platform into the foundational data infrastructure for the entire company
- You’ll lead technical architecture and drive implementation for services across our whole stack, covering areas such as access control, an ingestion framework, AI-driven data classification, a semantic and governance layer, data product/ELT platform, a dashboarding and query tool, and more
- We are an agentic first team: we leverage AI deeply and comprehensively to accelerate development and make things possible that wouldn’t be otherwise, and all our tools and services are agentic first for our users and the products they build on top of them
- Town Lake is already used by dozens of teams across Cloudflare including Billing, Trust & Safety, Developer Platform, GTM and Support organizations. This is a high-impact, high-visibility role where you’ll work with critical teams across the company to solve real and interesting problems
- Define, design and execute strategic technical architecture for highly visible, highly critical data infrastructure at the company
- Lead the design and development of tools and infrastructure to improve and scale our data infrastructure at Cloudflare
- Lead the design and development of data pipelines and data products to serve customers throughout the company, including tools to automate delivery of those services
- Become a subject matter expert across both our data platforms, tools and infrastructures as well as our data itself to guide and enable stakeholders with data needs
- Work across our tech stack, which includes Kubernetes, Trino, Iceberg, Clickhouse, and PostgreSQL, with software built using Go, Javascript/Typescript, Python, and others
- Mentor and support junior engineers on the team, reinforcing a culture of exceptional delivery and accountability on the team
Application process
- 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
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
- Competitive pay: We offer a competitive total rewards package, where every employee is an owner of our stock.
- 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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