About the Department
Cloudflare's Engineering Team builds and runs the software that handles large volumes of HTTP requests on the Internet today. We also build and run the internal tools that power our software. Within this organization, the Identity and Access Management (IAM) team is the foundation of our Control Plane. We are responsible for the security, scalability, and reliability of how every customer and internal service interacts with the Cloudflare ecosystem.
What You'll Do
As a Principal Engineer, you will be the technical north star for our IAM and Control Plane strategy. Your role transcends individual features; you will be responsible for the long-term health and architectural evolution of our identity systems.
- Architectural Leadership: Lead the design and evolution of high-throughput, low-latency IAM systems that power both customer-facing and internal service APIs.
- Technical Strategy: Define the roadmap for migrating or scaling our legacy authentication and authorization systems into modern, distributed architectures.
- Cross-Functional Influence: Work closely with Product, Security, and UX teams to translate complex business requirements into robust, secure technical specifications.
- Mentorship & Excellence: Set the standard for engineering excellence through deep code reviews, technical design documents, and mentoring senior engineers.
- Operational Stewardship: Oversee the reliability of a platform under constant load, ensuring observability and resilience are baked into the core of the system.
- Extensive Experience: 10+ years of professional experience building and managing software applications at a massive scale (with at least 5 years at a Senior or Staff level).
- Identity Domain Expertise: Deep understanding of IAM protocols (OAuth2, OIDC, SAML), RBAC/ABAC models, and the security implications of session management at the edge.
- Distributed Systems Mastery: Proven track record in designing, architecting, and debugging large-scale distributed systems that handle global traffic.
- Language Proficiency: Deep knowledge of Go (our primary backend language), though expertise in TypeScript, Rust, C++, or similar is highly valued.
- Database & Storage: Expert-level knowledge of relational databases (PostgreSQL) and distributed caching/storage strategies.
- API Stewardship: Significant experience designing and versioning public-facing APIs that are used by millions of developers.
- Cloudflare Ecosystem: Experience building on Cloudflare Workers or similar serverless/edge computing environments.
- Observability Advocate: A passion for building "observable" systems using Prometheus, Grafana, and Kibana to proactively identify failures.
- Infrastructure as Code: Experience with modern containerized deployment (Docker & Kubernetes), Terraform, and infrastructure automation.
- Security Mindset: A background in security engineering or formal verification of protocol implementations.
- Strategic Delivery: A history of leading multi-quarter projects from conception to global rollout in partnership with product owners.
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What We Do
Cloudflare, Inc. (NYSE: NET) is the leading connectivity cloud company on a mission to help build a better Internet. It empowers organizations to make their employees, applications and networks faster and more secure everywhere, while reducing complexity and cost. Cloudflare’s connectivity cloud delivers the most full-featured, unified platform of cloud-native products and developer tools, so any organization can gain the control they need to work, develop, and accelerate their business. Powered by one of the world’s largest and most interconnected networks, Cloudflare blocks billions of threats online for its customers every day. It is trusted by millions of organizations – from the largest brands to entrepreneurs and small businesses to nonprofits, humanitarian groups, and governments across the globe.
Why Work With Us
Cloudflare employees come from all walks of life. We are mission-driven, and our team is energized by a collaborative, creative environment that celebrates our differences and fosters new ways to grow together.
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Employees engage in a combination of remote and on-site work.
We are committed to developing a global team that is distributed with a flexible working approach. Doing this equitably and inclusively is essential to our success. Visit our careers site for more on 'How & Where We Work.'
