Hardware Systems Engineer

Available Locations: Austin

About The Department

Cloudflare’s Infrastructure group is responsible for building our global network. Our Hardware Engineering team helps research, develop, test, and deploy new equipment enabling 20% of the world’s internet traffic to be served smoothly. Deployed across 330 cities in 120+ countries, the hardware we select helps improve the security, reliability, and performance of the Internet.

About The Role

We need to make thoughtful infrastructure choices affecting a significant portion of the Internet. Hardware we work with includes servers and components, as well as PDUs and network hardware. As a Hardware Systems Engineer, you will work with colleagues on the Engineering teams, Product and Performance teams, and Hardware Sourcing teams to design, qualify and maintain Cloudflare’s worldwide fleet of servers

What You'll Do

• Support and assist in the end to end server product qualification from concept to deployment, ensuring hardware designs (electrical, thermal and mechanical) are optimized for seamless, large-scale implementation by the Infrastructure Operations team.
• Support and assist gathering product requirements for next generation of servers, and work with silicon vendors to assess performance and select the components (CPU, memory, disk, NIC, GPUs etc)
• Collaborate closely with strategy, sourcing, and capacity planning teams to steer server infrastructure initiatives in alignment with Cloudflare’s business goals
• Collaborate with the Site Reliability Engineering team to onboard and integrate the next generation of servers into provisioning tools and fleet management tools.
• Collaborate with performance team and software teams to optimize software performance on the hardware
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams to deploy firmware updates, triage hardware problem reports, resolve hardware issues, maintain automation tools.
• Communicate your results and updates through blog posts and internal talks

Examples Of Desirable Skills, Knowledge And Experience

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, or Computer Science
• Foundational knowledge or internship/academic experience with compute design engineering, validation, performance benchmarking, debugging, and deployment used in the data center
• Curiosity and desire to learn about the Cloudflare hardware and products used by 20% of all web sites
• Desire to learn how a diverse server fleet is managed at scale with tools such as traffic management, capacity planning and failover mechanisms
• Desire to learn the tools Cloudflare uses to maintain and monitor our hardware
• Harness AI tools and automation to fundamentally accelerate the qualification lifecycle, driving exponential efficiency gains and quality standards.
• Possess the organizational skills and interest to manage cross-functional technical projects, ensuring architectural designs seamlessly align with delivery schedules.
• Thrive as a deeply self-motivated engineer in ambiguous environments, demonstrating a strong bias for action and the ability to drive initiatives forward without close supervision.

Bonus Points

• Master’s degree in Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, or Computer Science
• Knowledge and experience with server hardware including motherboard designs, chassis designs, thermal designs, as well as CPU, memory & storage technology
• Knowledge of bash, python and basic Linux task automation
• Knowledge of Redfish, IPMI and server remote management protocols, and experience with firmware updates
• Knowledge or experience of performance optimization based on hardware / software codesign
• Knowledge and experience of debugging server hardware faults and the ability to engage with our sourcing team and vendors to improve quality
• Experience of working with external vendors on server hardware qualification.
• Experience of observability and monitoring tools such as Prometheus and Grafana, as well as the ability to observe trends over time
• Experience with software development tools and processes such as Git, TeamCity and Jira
• Experience in a hyperscale cloud infrastructure role also valuable

Compensation

Compensation may be adjusted depending on work location.

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