Principal Systems Engineer

Cloudflare - San Francisco, CA

Full-time - Senior

San Francisco, CA

Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services

About the position

As an Engineer at Cloudflare, you will design, build, and operate production systems at a massive scale, impacting millions of Internet properties. Your role will involve working across multiple teams to enhance system performance, reliability, and maintainability, while also addressing legacy systems. You will engage in a dynamic environment that emphasizes continuous improvement and collaboration, utilizing a tech stack that includes Rust, Go, and Typescript.

Responsibilities

• Design and build production systems at scale.
• Operate and maintain systems covering the entire path of customer requests.
• Collaborate with multiple teams on high-priority projects.
• Measure and improve system performance and reliability.
• Understand and fix issues with legacy systems.
• Implement tools and processes to enhance operations.

Requirements

• Minimum 10 years of professional experience as a Software Developer/Engineer.
• Substantial hands-on systems level programming and troubleshooting experience.
• Experience operating high performance and large scale services.
• Knowledge of Layer 4-7 protocols (e.g., gRPC, TCP, UDP, HTTP, QUIC).
• Knowledge of network load balancing and routing techniques.
• Strong communication skills to analyze and convey complex technical requirements.
• Ability to implement tools and resolve operational blockages.
• Strong curiosity and a desire to learn and teach others.
• Cryptography experience, particularly around compliance (e.g., FIPS).
• Knowledge of two or more mainstream programming languages.

Nice-to-haves

• Strong interpersonal and communication skills with a bias towards action.
• Experience managing internal and/or external customer requirements and expectations.
• Demonstrable experience with high-quality technical writing.
• Good Linux systems knowledge.
• Experience with CI/CD, containers, virtualization, web servers, and databases.

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
• Short and Long Term Disability Insurance
• Life & Accident Insurance
• 401(k) Retirement Savings Plan
• Employee Stock Participation Plan
• Flexible paid time off covering vacation and sick leave
• Leave programs, including parental, pregnancy health, medical, and bereavement leave