Response Engineer, Cloudflare
Cloudflare Managed Defense Center
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
- We are looking for an analytical security practitioner who thrives in this always-on operational environment and bridges the gap between deep technical analysis and premium customer advisory
- 4–7 years of direct, hands-on experience in Managed Detection and Response (MDR), advanced Security Operations, or high-level Technical Support/Incident Response for enterprise infrastructure
- Proven capability to handle both Application Security (including knowledge of OWASP Top 10 vulnerabilities, L7 WAF, HTTP/S anomalies, Bot mitigation) and Network Security (L3/L4 volumetric DDoS, protocol abuse)
- Working knowledge of threat frameworks such as MITRE ATT&CK to classify adversary behavior and inform detection and mitigation strategies
- Operational understanding of internet protocols including TCP, UDP, ICMP, GRE, BGP, DNS, with the ability to quickly diagnose attack fingerprints and infrastructure impact during volumetric DDoS attacks
- Hands-on experience with packet capture (e.g., tcpdump, Wireshark, tshark) or HTTP traffic inspection (e.g., HAR, Burp Suite) to analyze malicious traffic
- Extensive experience managing technical communications with enterprise customers during high-stress, active attacks, with the ability to remain calm under pressure and translate complex attack data into clear actionable advice
- Ability and willingness to work 24x7 rotating shifts to support global operations
- Knowledge of industry security technologies (e.g., enterprise CDNs, cloud-based DDoS scrubbing centers, Next-Gen WAFs, and edge network firewalls) (Preferred)
- Proficiency in Linux/Unix environments and strong scripting skills (Bash, Python preferred) for workflow automation (including experience leveraging agentic AI environments or LLMs to optimize operations) and experience interacting with REST APIs or GraphQL to pull and correlate operational data (Preferred)
- Experience building or querying dashboards in Prometheus and Grafana for performance and attack metrics (Preferred)
- Highly valued security and networking certifications such as GIAC (e.g., GCIA, GCIH, GCFA, GCFE), Cisco CCNA/CCNP, or equivalent hands-on incident response credentials (Preferred)
What the job involves
- The Response Engineer within the Cloudflare Managed Defense Center acts as a primary technical responder for Cloudflare's premium enterprise customers
- You will autonomously investigate complex threat telemetry, handle live incident response for sophisticated volumetric DDoS and application-layer attacks, and analyze traffic anomalies during high-pressure events
- Customers contact the Managed Defense Center for assistance and intelligence across Cloudflare's security portfolio, focused on two core pillars: Web Application Security (WAF and Bot Management) and DDoS mitigation across network and application layers
- Managed Defense Response Engineers use customer-facing dashboards and internal tools to make detailed and informed suggestions for mitigation, and may implement mitigation strategies directly on behalf of the customer
- The team provides continuous proactive monitoring and analysis of security events through internal alerting systems
- Implement robust mitigation strategies for complex attacks across OSI Layers 3, 4, and 7 using Cloudflare's suite (Magic Transit, Magic Firewall, Advanced TCP Protection, Advanced DNS Protection, WAF, Custom Rules, IP Access Rules, Bot Management, and Rate Limiting)
- Monitor and investigate proactive alerts, performing near real-time packet and traffic flow analysis and correlation to detect protocol exhaustion and application-layer exploitation, translating findings into custom, highly targeted mitigation rules
- Review alerts to determine relevancy and urgency, proactively escalate customer-impacting incidents, and adhere to Customer SLAs for alert response and customer communication
- Act as the primary technical contact for customers during active security incidents, driving high-touch, consultative communication (via phone, chat, email) with customers' technical engineering teams to neutralize threats while ensuring stable traffic delivery
- Continuously tune and optimize existing security monitoring rules and alerting thresholds to improve the operational signal-to-noise ratio and reduce false positives
- Lead managed customer onboarding sessions, maintain customer-specific runbooks, and deliver highly technical monthly security posture reviews and post-incident reports
- Partner directly with internal engineering, product, and threat intelligence teams to provide actionable feedback on attack trends, tooling gaps, and product enhancements
Salary benchmarks
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.
Share this job
View 165 more jobs at Cloudflare