Senior Systems Engineer, Pipelines

Available Locations | Austin, TX; Seattle, WA or London, UK

About the Role

Emerging Technologies & Incubation (ETI) is where new and bold products are built and released within Cloudflare. Rather than being constrained by the structures which make Cloudflare a massively successful business, we are able to leverage them to deliver entirely new tools and products to our customers. Cloudflare’s edge and network make it possible to solve problems at massive scale and efficiency which would be impossible for almost any other organization.

Is this role a fit for you?

We are looking for engineers who build infrastructure software from scratch, not those who operate it. If your core expertise is configuring, managing, scaling, or writing applications on top of existing data platforms like Kafka, Flink, Spark, Databricks, or Snowflake, this role is not the right fit. We are seeking the engineers who can write the code that replaces these tools.

Responsibilities

• As a Senior Systems Engineer focused on Cloudflare's core storage and streaming products, you will design and implement the foundational layers of our next-generation data services. We work backward from developer needs, reimagining solutions by leveraging our unique global network.
• You will own your code from inception to release, delivering solutions at all layers of the software stack to empower Cloudflare customers. On any given day, you might be architecting a new globally distributed data consistency model, optimizing storage engine performance, or designing a novel API for a new data-centric product. You can expect to interact with a variety of languages and technologies including, but not limited to JavaScript, Typescript, Rust, and C++.

Desirable Skills, Knowledge, and Experience

• Minimum 6+ years of experience designing, building, and deploying the internals of large-scale distributed systems or storage engines from scratch.
• Direct experience writing core components of a storage or streaming system.
• Proven track record of debugging, profiling, and fixing complex race conditions, split-brain scenarios, and network partition failures at the infrastructure layer.
• Deep, expert-level proficiency in Rust or C++ applied to systems programming.

Bonus Points

• Experience building time-series databases, log-structured merge-trees, or real-time stream processing engines from the ground up.
• Academic or professional contributions to distributed systems research (e.g., consensus, conflict-free replicated data types (CRDTs), or database theory).

Compensation

Compensation may be adjusted depending on work location.

• For New York City, New Jersey, Washington, Washington DC, and California (excluding Bay Area) based hires: Estimated annual salary of $185,000 - $254,000

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