Software Engineer, Network Performance & Reliability

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. 

At Cloudflare, we’re not looking for people who wait for a polished roadmap; we’re looking for the builders who see the cracks in the Internet that everyone else has simply learned to live with. We value candidates who have the instinct to spot a "normalized" problem and the AI-native curiosity to create a solution using the latest tools. Our culture is built on iteration, leveraging AI to ship faster today to make it better tomorrow, while ensuring that every improvement, no matter how small, is shared across the team to lift everyone up. If you’re the type of person who values curiosity over bureaucracy, and that AI is a partner in solving tough problems to keep the Internet moving forward, you’ll fit right in.

What You’ll Do

The Argo team was formed to own a very important aspect of Cloudflare's systems: enable more reliable network connectivity for Cloudflare’s products than the Internet itself provides.

Almost all products in Cloudflare’s portfolio are or will be powered by Argo technology, including CDN, Spectrum, Magic Transit, Stream, Workers, Workers AI, R2, WARP, and more. As a member of the Argo team, you’ll be a key technical contributor to the cutting edge network software infrastructure used by those products.

You will work closely with various Engineering teams to translate their requirements into new capabilities on the platform. Likewise you will partner with Network Engineering and SRE to ensure that the technology makes the best use of Cloudflare's world-class edge network.

You will participate in all stages of the software development lifecycle, from designing and documenting systems, to writing code and automated tests, to planning, managing, and monitoring production software deployments. You will work with a wide range of technologies and programming languages, including Rust, Go, Linux networking, ClickHouse, PostgreSQL, Grafana, Kubernetes, and more. You will use AI-powered tools and systems as part of your daily workflow to analyze and extend codebases, introspect production systems and datasets, and accelerate problem-solving.

Engineering teams at Cloudflare operate a Run What You Build model, including ours. We are responsible for the health of our system and participate in our team's on-call rotation as part of operational responsibilities.

Because you’ll be solving problems of massive scale and significance, you are a growth-oriented individual who enjoys being outside of your comfort zone. You are comfortable in a fast-paced but sensible work environment. You value curiosity and empathy and lead with these values.

Must-Have Skills

• Systems-level programming experience in Go, Rust, C, or C++. We use Rust extensively, and while experience with the language isn't required a willingness to learn it is.
• A solid grasp of networking protocols in Layers 3 and 4 of the OSI Model.
• Knowledge of HTTP, TLS, and CDN networks.
• Experience in implementing secure and highly-available distributed systems.
• Strong ability to debug issues in complex systems.
• Strong collaboration and communication skills.
• Experience/interest in HTTP networking and VPN technologies.
• Experience/interest in network performance monitoring and tuning.
• Willingness to adopt and integrate AI tools and systems into your engineering workflow.

Bonus Points

• Knowledge of TCP/IP and Internet routing.
• Professional systems-level programming experience in Rust.
• Working knowledge of statistical-analysis techniques and control theory.
• Experience building tools and APIs.
• Experience with monitoring, alerting, and debugging large-scale distributed systems
• Experience participating in an on-call rotation.
• Experience using AI-assisted development tools (e.g., code completion, codebase analysis, log/data exploration) in a professional setting.

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.