Principal Solutions Architect

Available Locations: Amsterdam, London, Munich, Lisbon, Paris
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.
About Solutions Engineering at Cloudflare
The Pre-Sales Solution Engineering organization owns the technical sale of the Cloudflare solution portfolio, ensuring maximal business value, fit-for-purpose solution design and adoption roadmap for our customers. Solutions Engineering is made up of individuals from a wide range of backgrounds - from Financial Consulting to Product Management, Customer Support to Software Engineering, and we are serious about building a diverse, experienced and curious team.
What you'll do as a Solutions Architect
The Solutions Architect is a senior technical leadership role. You are a customer facing hands-on technologist with credibility built on domain expertise across Cloudflare portfolio. You should have solid experience in influencing enterprise architecture design across various senior buyer personas both at customers and partner organizations. Your role will be to convince these decision makers of the long term value of thinking of Cloudflare as a strategic technology partner.
You will work closely with every team at Cloudflare, from Sales and Product, through to Engineering and Customer Support. Your goal of customer success should drive you through the entire organization as you seek out and create scalable solutions for your customer's needs.
You will work as a part of a highly visible structured pursuit team attached to designated strategic accounts, working to understand their unique business challenges and priorities with a goal of defining short and long term solution architecture with Cloudflare as a centerpiece. An equally important component of this role is the expectation that you scale your expertise and knowledge across the wider Pre Sales Solution Engineering organization.
Specifically, we are looking for you to:
Build and maintain the long term technical relationship of key accounts, ensuring the successful design, proof and adoption of Cloudflare as a part of the customers critical infrastructure.
Identify and drive strategic conversations with key stakeholders with the purpose of increasing our reputation and authority within the business, and further establishing our footprint within the customers landscape.
Be the voice of the customer, engaging and influencing Product Management and Product Roadmap to serve their needs.
Demonstrate your expertise of Cloudflare within your field through the creation of professional content, including white papers, reference architectures, blog posts.
Represent and Evangelize Cloudflare externally at Developer, Community, Technology, Cybersecurity and Industry focused events with thought leadership and expertise.
Apply in-depth vertical knowledge or domain expertise. Advise on best practices.
Desirable skills, knowledge and experience

• 10+ years of experience in similar role or experience in a technical leadership role
• Previous experience as a solution architect, consultant or technical marketing engineer building, architecting or deploying security solutions
• Good understanding of AI, security challenges and its applicability to today's enterprise landscape
• Proven track record using it to help drive revenue.
• Strong knowledge of Security Architecture, Design and Operations
• Working knowledge of the broader threat landscape and the ability to distill technology trends, and explain complex behaviors in simple terms
• Proven experience working with customers and partners in successful design and deployment of solutions. Run architectural workshops.
• Ability to juggle and successfully drive projects with customers, prospects, and partners.
• Deep knowledge in one or more of the following domains:
• App Services (CDN, WAF, Bot Management, API Security)
• Zero Trust / SSE (ZTNA, SWG, RBI, Email, SD-WAN)
• Networking (DDOS, CNI, IPSEC/GRE, SD-WAN, Cloud Networking)
• Developer (Distributed, full-stack applications (frontend, backend, databases, related services); ideally in a serverless paradigm
• Experience across:
• Application, Security, Performance and Reliability products such as WAF, Bot Management, DDOS, Firewall, DNS and CDN.
• Cloud computing solutions implementations including Microsoft 365, Azure, Google, AWS.
• Proven hands-on experience with information security solutions such as Web Proxy, NGFW, Security Gateways, SIEMs, SAML/SSO, DLP, Data security and protection technologies such as HSM, Tokenization & encryption gateways.
• Working with Identity Providers such as Entra AD, Okta, Ping, OneLogin, etc.
• Cloud computing based services architecture, technical design and implementations including Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service.
• Knowledge of competitive market around CDN providers, Web application Firewall, Remote access solutions, Next generation Firewalls, DDOS mitigations solutions, SD-WAN solutions , Secure Gateway solutions, SSE/SASE
• Knowledge of web application programming XML, REST/SOAP API's, REST, JSON,
• (PaaS) and Software as a Service (SaaS) delivery models.
• Knowledge of scripting languages such as Python and IAC products like Terraform
• Knowledge of security and cryptography.
• Knowledge of cloud/virtualization technologies and containerization