AI Security Research & Red Team Engineer, Cloudflare
$166-208k
Plus equity
Web performance and security platform
Posted today
Web performance and security platform
1001+ employees
Posted today
$166-208k
Plus equity
1001+ employees
Company mission
To help build a better Internet that is bold and ambitious.
Role
Who you are
- Experience: 4+ years in offensive security, application security or other relevant field
- Deep knowledge: AI, Coding agents, LLMs, prompt engineering, AI-related attack vectors (e.g., prompt injection, jailbreaking), and Agentic concepts all for use in the red team but also testing Cloudflare uses
- Technical Roots: A strong background in manual penetration testing, exploit development, or cloud security (AWS/GCP/Bare Metal)
- Operational Mindset: Experience using the MITRE ATT&CK framework to map coverage and identify "blind spots" in defensive telemetry
- Communication Skills: The ability to explain a complex "0-day" exploit to a non-technical stakeholder while maintaining the respect of a deep-dive engineering team
- Tooling Familiarity: Knowledge of automated breach and attack simulation (BAS) tools, as well as custom-built frameworks for payload delivery and C2 infrastructure
What the job involves
- We are seeking a highly skilled AI Security Research & Red team engineer to join our Red Team within the Security Threat Detection, Response and Emulation organization
- This is a critical role that will be at the forefront of protecting our company and customers from malicious threats
- You will be responsible for driving security research, exercises, and activities that emulate real world attackers and attacks to drive improvements in Cloudflare’s security posture focusing on AI, Agents, harnesses and LLM’s
- AI Security and Vulnerability Research: Stay current with emerging threats and perform deep-dive research to identify AI-specific vulnerabilities and risks in addition to general vulnerabilities across Cloudflare’s products and services
- Agentic testing and adoption: As a core function, identifying AI-related attack surfaces through rigorous testing of agentic implementations and LLM usage which will help define requirements and implementation guidance while proactively
- Adversary Simulation: Execution of full-chain red team operations targeting Cloudflare’s global infrastructure, corporate networks, and product ecosystems
- Efficacy Testing: Establish a rigorous framework for testing "Security Efficacy"—measuring exactly how well our WAF, EDR, and SIEM detections perform against known TTPs (Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures)
- Purple Teaming: Foster a highly collaborative relationship with the Blue Team (Detection & Response) to ensure findings are translated into immediate defensive improvements
- Mentorship & Growth: Be a technical leader, providing technical expertise while fostering a culture of curiosity, ethical hacking and partnering to improve Cloudflare’s security posture
- Executive Reporting: Translate complex technical exploits into risk-based narratives for leadership, helping prioritize engineering resources where they matter most
- Security Incident Response Team (SIRT): You will act as the "sparring partner" for SIRT. By conducting unannounced exercises, you help them refine their playbooks, test their on-call rotations, and ensure their forensic tooling is effective under pressure
- Threat Detection & Threat Engineering: You will partner closely with these teams to bridge the gap between adversary simulation and defensive coverage. You will proactively identify detection gaps, lead the development of new detection logic, and establish rigorous validation frameworks to test and tune detections against emerging TTPs
- Product Engineering/SRE: We operate as "Customer Zero" of our own products, your red teaming findings will drive resilience in processes and implementations, ultimately making Cloudflare and its customers more secure
- Governance, Risk, and Compliance (GRC): You will bridge the gap between "paper security" and "technical reality." By providing empirical evidence of control effectiveness, you help GRC move away from manual audits and toward continuous, automated compliance validation
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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