Principal Software Engineer, Cloudflare
Distributed Systems, Config, Test, and Deployment
$200-288k
Salary dependent on location. Plus equity.
Web performance and security platform
Be an early applicant
Web performance and security platform
1001+ employees
Be an early applicant
$200-288k
Salary dependent on location. Plus equity.
1001+ employees
Company mission
To help build a better Internet that is bold and ambitious.
Role
Who you are
- 10+ years of software engineering experience with a demonstrated history of leading complex, organization-wide technical initiatives that delivered measurable improvements to system performance, reliability, security, developer productivity, or engineering culture
- Strong track record of technical leadership and influence without direct authority, including driving consensus on technical decisions across multiple teams, mentoring senior engineers, and establishing architectural patterns that are widely adopted across an organization
- Experience designing, building and managing high volume, global scale software applications
- Expert in at least one modern strongly-typed programming language
- Knowledge of API design standards, patterns and best practices
- Experience working with top tier LLMs to plan, write, test, and deploy software
Desirable
- Strong interpersonal and communication skills with a bias towards action
- Experience with scaling and simplifying high scale Configuration Management systems
- Familiarity with Google’s Prodspec and Annealing systems
- Experience with Kubernetes
- Experience with RocksDB or similar data stores
- Experience with health checking and probe platforms at significant scale
- Public evidence of technical leadership such as conference talks on distributed systems or security, widely-read technical blog posts, significant open source contributions, or published architectural patterns that have been adopted by the broader engineering community
What the job involves
- Cloudflare’s engineers build and operate the software that helps power 25+ million Internet properties and millions of businesses around the world
- Across our engineering organizations, we have opportunities for high caliber, curious and empathetic people to take on big challenges and build some of the best skills in the industry
- We’re looking for talented team members to help build high-growth products, help scale our expanding network, build tools to improve availability, performance, uptime, and response times, and make systems failure-resistant and ready-to-scale
- Cloudflare is a fast growing company and engineering is an ever-evolving function with teams being formed and redefined often
- You will interview for an engineering role in the Intent Management organization which is part of the overall Foundational Engineering team at Cloudflare, which builds and operates many of the fundamental systems powering Cloudflare’s products
- You will own the technical coherence of a platform that spans globally distributed key-value storage, progressive release and configuration delivery, and the testing and health-mediation systems that prove change is safe
- You'll work at the seams that matter most by translating what Cloudflare's Edge and control-plane platforms need into the primitives our teams build
- You'll move fluidly between writing production code, designing new systems, and reviewing the proposals of other senior engineers
- You’ll also help us work out how best to integrate LLMs into our processes and systems
- You will be working alongside engineers who have presented at DevOps Days, Config Management Camp 2024 & 2025, Monitorama, OSMC, KubeCon and PromCon
- Together you will deliver on the key Health Mediated Deployment projects that are being tracked through senior leadership of Cloudflare up to the founders
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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