About Us

At Cloudflare, we are on a mission to help build a better Internet. Today the company runs one of the world’s largest networks that powers millions of websites and other Internet properties for customers ranging from individual bloggers to SMBs to Fortune 500 companies. Cloudflare protects and accelerates any Internet application online without adding hardware, installing software, or changing a line of code. Internet properties powered by Cloudflare all have web traffic routed through its intelligent global network, which gets smarter with every request. As a result, they see significant improvement in performance and a decrease in spam and other attacks. Cloudflare was named to Entrepreneur Magazine’s Top Company Cultures list and ranked among the World’s Most Innovative Companies by Fast Company.

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. We cannot complete our mission without building a diverse and inclusive team. We hire the best people based on an evaluation of their potential and support them throughout their time at Cloudflare. Come join us!

Locations: Austin, TX | New York, NY | San Francisco, CA | Seattle, WA | London, UK

About the Department: Emerging Technologies & Incubation (ETI)

Emerging Technologies & Incubation (ETI) at Cloudflare is where we build and launch bold new products. We leverage Cloudflare's unique global network and edge to deliver innovative tools and solutions, solving problems at a scale impossible for most organizations. Join us to work on the bleeding edge.

About the Team: R2

The R2 team builds Cloudflare's object storage platform, offering developers durable, reliable storage seamlessly integrated with our Developer Platform (e.g., Workers). We own foundational infrastructure operating at massive scale, powering critical workloads across Cloudflare's global network. This involves designing and maintaining distributed systems for high throughput, strong consistency, durability, and a growing number of developer features.

You'll join a highly motivated and collaborative team that owns the full R2 stack, tackling complex distributed systems problems with a focus on global reliability and performance.

What You’ll Do

Set the technical direction for some of our most critical and complex infrastructure projects.
Drive large-scale architectural decisions that span multiple teams and services.
Design and implement systems that operate reliably under heavy load and at massive scale.
Lead technical investigations and break down ambiguous problems into clear plans of action.
Collaborate closely with engineers across teams, product managers, and infrastructure stakeholders to align goals and deliver on timelines.
Be a key contributor to our roadmap — helping shape the future of R2’s architecture, performance, and reliability.

Examples of desirable skills, knowledge, and experience

Experience setting the architecture and technical direction for large, cross-team, and cross-functional engineering efforts.
Strong systems-level programming skills.
A deep understanding of distributed systems concepts such as consistency, consensus, data replication, and partition tolerance.
Proven experience building and maintaining high-throughput, low-latency systems.
Strong written and verbal communication skills; ability to explain technical decisions clearly and drive alignment.
Comfortable operating in fast-paced environments with tight deadlines and evolving priorities.
Experience with storage systems, networking, or large-scale cloud infrastructure is a strong plus.

Compensation

Compensation may be adjusted depending on work location.

For New York City, Washington, and California (excluding Bay Area) based hires: Estimated annual salary of $230,000 - $281,000
For Bay Area-based hires: Estimated annual salary of $234,000 - $286,000

Equity

This role is eligible to participate in Cloudflare’s equity plan.

Benefits

Cloudflare offers a complete package of benefits and programs to support you and your family. Our benefits programs can help you pay health care expenses, support caregiving, build capital for the future and make life a little easier and fun! The below is a description of our benefits for employees in the United States, and benefits may vary for employees based outside the U.S.

Health & Welfare Benefits

Medical/Rx Insurance
Dental Insurance
Vision Insurance
Flexible Spending Accounts
Commuter Spending Accounts
Fertility & Family Forming Benefits
On-demand mental health support and Employee Assistance Program
Global Travel Medical Insurance

Financial Benefits

Short and Long Term Disability Insurance
Life & Accident Insurance
401(k) Retirement Savings Plan
Employee Stock Participation Plan

Time Off

Flexible paid time off covering vacation and sick leave
Leave programs, including parental, pregnancy health, medical, and bereavement leave

What Makes Cloudflare Special?

We’re not just a highly ambitious, large-scale technology company. We’re a highly ambitious, large-scale technology company with a soul. Fundamental to our mission to help build a better Internet is protecting the free and open Internet.

Project Galileo: Since 2014, we've equipped more than 2,400 journalism and civil society organizations in 111 countries with powerful tools to defend themselves against attacks that would otherwise censor their work, technology already used by Cloudflare’s enterprise customers--at no cost.

Athenian Project: In 2017, we created the Athenian Project to ensure that state and local governments have the highest level of protection and reliability for free, so that their constituents have access to election information and voter registration. Since the project, we've provided services to more than 425 local government election websites in 33 states.

1.1.1.1: We released 1.1.1.1 to help fix the foundation of the Internet by building a faster, more secure and privacy-centric public DNS resolver. This is available publicly for everyone to use - it is the first consumer-focused service Cloudflare has ever released. Here’s the deal - we don’t store client IP addresses never, ever. We will continue to abide by our privacy commitment and ensure that no user data is sold to advertisers or used to target consumers.

Sound like something you’d like to be a part of? We’d love to hear from you!

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.

Cloudflare is proud to be an equal opportunity employer. We are committed to providing equal employment opportunity for all people and place great value in both diversity and inclusiveness. All qualified applicants will be considered for employment without regard to their, or any other person's, perceived or actual race, color, religion, sex, gender, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, national origin, ancestry, citizenship, age, physical or mental disability, medical condition, family care status, or any other basis protected by law. We are an AA/Veterans/Disabled Employer.

Cloudflare provides reasonable accommodations to qualified individuals with disabilities. Please tell us if you require a reasonable accommodation to apply for a job. Examples of reasonable accommodations include, but are not limited to, changing the application process, providing documents in an alternate format, using a sign language interpreter, or using specialized equipment. If you require a reasonable accommodation to apply for a job, please contact us via e-mail at hr@cloudflare.com or via mail at 101 Townsend St. San Francisco, CA 94107.

Principal Software Engineer, R2 Storage