Principal Software Engineer: Distributed Systems (Config, Test, & Deployment)

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.
Available Locations: Washington DC, Austin, NYC, San Francisco
About the Dept
Cloudflare's engineers build and operate the software that helps power 25+ million Internet properties and millions of businesses around the world. Across our engineering organizations, we have opportunities for high caliber, curious and empathetic people to take on big challenges and build some of the best skills in the industry. We're looking for talented team members to help build high-growth products, help scale our expanding network, build tools to improve availability, performance, uptime, and response times, and make systems failure-resistant and ready-to-scale.
Cloudflare is a fast growing company and engineering is an ever-evolving function with teams being formed and redefined often. You will interview for an engineering role in the Intent Management organization which is part of the overall Foundational Engineering team at Cloudflare, which builds and operates many of the fundamental systems powering Cloudflare's products.
What you'll do
Too many of Cloudflare's most impactful incidents have had unsafe change as a root cause. The Intent Management exists to make safe change the easy button and this is the most senior IC role in that organization, reporting directly to the Senior Director. You will own the technical coherence of a platform that spans globally distributed key-value storage, progressive release and configuration delivery, and the testing and health-mediation systems that prove change is safe. You'll work at the seams that matter most by translating what Cloudflare's Edge and control-plane platforms need into the primitives our teams build. You'll move fluidly between writing production code, designing new systems, and reviewing the proposals of other senior engineers. You'll also help us work out how best to integrate LLMs into our processes and systems.
You will be working alongside engineers who have presented at DevOps Days, Config Management Camp 2024 & 2025, Monitorama, OSMC, KubeCon and PromCon. Together you will deliver on the key Health Mediated Deployment projects that are being tracked through senior leadership of Cloudflare up to the founders.
Examples of desirable skills, knowledge and experience

• 10+ years of software engineering experience with a demonstrated history of leading complex, organization-wide technical initiatives that delivered measurable improvements to system performance, reliability, security, developer productivity, or engineering culture.
• Strong track record of technical leadership and influence without direct authority, including driving consensus on technical decisions across multiple teams, mentoring senior engineers, and establishing architectural patterns that are widely adopted across an organization.

• Experience designing, building and managing high volume, global scale software applications.
• Expert in at least one modern strongly-typed programming language
• Knowledge of API design standards, patterns and best practices
• Experience working with top tier LLMs to plan, write, test, and deploy software

Bonus Points

• Strong interpersonal and communication skills with a bias towards action
• Experience with scaling and simplifying high scale Configuration Management systems
• Familiarity with Google's Prodspec and Annealing systems
• Experience with Kubernetes
• Experience with RocksDB or similar data stores
• Experience with health checking and probe platforms at significant scale
• Public evidence of technical leadership such as conference talks on distributed systems or security, widely-read technical blog posts, significant open source contributions, or published architectural patterns that have been adopted by the broader engineering community.

Compensation
Compensation may be adjusted depending on work location.

• For Bay Area based hires: Estimated annual salary of $230,000 - $288,000
• For Washington and New York City based hired: Estimated annual salary of $220,000 - $275,000
• For Austin based hired: Estimated annual salary of $200,000 - $250,000

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!
Please note that applicants who progress to the offer stage of the interview process may be asked to attend an in-person interview within one of the Cloudflare Offices or Cloudflare Hubs. More details about this will be available at that stage of the interview process.
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 [email protected] or via mail at 101 Townsend St. San Francisco, CA 94107.