Distributed Systems Engineer, Analytical Database Platform

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 have web traffic routed through its intelligent global network, which gets smarter with every request, resulting in significant performance improvements and decreased 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. We value candidates who spot "normalized" problems and use AI-native curiosity to create solutions with the latest tools. Our culture is built on iteration, leveraging AI to ship faster and improve continuously while sharing knowledge across the team.

Locations Available: Atlanta, US; Austin, US; Denver, US; Seattle, US; Washington DC, US; Lisbon, Portugal

About the role

The Analytical Database Platform is a critical component of Cloudflare Analytics, providing real-time visibility into the health and performance of Cloudflare customers' online properties. The team builds and maintains a high-performance, scalable database platform powered by ClickHouse, optimized for analytical workloads. We empower customers—both internal and external—to gain deeper insights, identify trends, and make data-driven decisions to optimize web performance, security, and other key metrics.

Responsibilities

• Develop and implement new platform components for the Cloudflare Analytical Database Platform to improve functionality and performance.
• Scale the platform by adding more database clusters to accommodate growing data volumes from Cloudflare products and services.
• Monitor and maintain the performance and reliability of existing database platform clusters, troubleshooting issues as they arise.
• Identify and remove bottlenecks within the analytics database platform, including optimizing query performance and streamlining data ingestion processes.
• Collaborate with the ClickHouse open-source community to contribute new features and functionality to the upstream codebase.
• Work with other teams across Cloudflare to understand their data needs and build solutions that enable data-driven decision-making.
• Research and evaluate new technologies and approaches to improve the database's performance and scalability for the next generation of the platform.

Requirements

• 3+ years of experience in software development, with a focus on distributed systems and databases.
• Strong programming skills in Golang, Python, or C++, along with a deep understanding of software development best practices.
• Strong knowledge of SQL and database internals, including database design, optimization, and performance tuning.
• Solid foundation in computer science, including algorithms, data structures, distributed systems, and concurrency.
• Ability to work collaboratively in a team environment and communicate effectively across teams.
• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills, with the ability to work independently and proactively address issues.

Qualifications

• Experience with ClickHouse is a plus.
• Experience with SALT or Terraform is a plus.
• Experience with Linux container technologies, such as Docker and Kubernetes, is a plus.

This role may require flexibility to be on-call outside of standard working hours to address technical issues as needed.

Benefits

Cloudflare offers a comprehensive benefits package to support you and your family. Programs may vary for employees 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?

• Project Galileo: Since 2014, we’ve equipped over 2,400 journalism and civil society organizations in 111 countries with tools to defend against censorship attacks—at no cost.
• Athenian Project: Created in 2017 to provide state and local governments with free, high-level protection and reliability for election information and voter registration. We’ve supported over 425 local government election websites across 33 states.
• 1.1.1.1: A faster, more secure, and privacy-centric public DNS resolver available to everyone. We don’t store client IP addresses and ensure no user data is sold to advertisers.

This role is eligible to participate in Cloudflare’s equity plan.