Distributed Systems Engineer - Data Platform (Delivery, Database, Retrieval)

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’re looking for builders who see the cracks in the Internet that everyone else has simply learned to live with. Our culture values curiosity over bureaucracy, leveraging AI to ship faster today to make it better tomorrow. If you’re passionate about using AI as a partner to solve tough problems and keep the Internet moving forward, you’ll fit right in.

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

About the role

We are looking for experienced and highly motivated engineers to join our Data Org and help build the future of data at Cloudflare. Our organization is responsible for the entire data lifecycle—from ingestion and processing to storage and retrieval—powering the critical logs and analytics that provide customers with real-time visibility into the health and performance of their online properties. Our mission is to empower customers to leverage their data to drive better business outcomes.

We build and maintain a suite of high-performance, scalable systems that handle more than a billion events per second. As an engineer in our organization, you will work on complex distributed systems challenges across different parts of our data stack. Our Data Org is composed of several key teams, and you could contribute to any of the following areas:

• Data Delivery: Build and operate our distributed data delivery pipeline, a high-throughput, low-latency system (primarily written in Go) responsible for ingesting, processing, and routing massive volumes of data from across Cloudflare's global network to multi-core destinations.
• Analytical Database Platform: Contribute to our core analytical platform powered by ClickHouse. This team builds and maintains a high-performance, scalable database platform optimized for immense analytical workloads.
• Data Retrieval: Build customer-facing products that make data accessible and actionable, including developing our public GraphQL API, robust log delivery solutions, integrations with customer destinations, and alerting products that empower users to configure near real-time alerts based on logs and metrics.

Responsibilities

• Design, develop, and maintain scalable and reliable distributed systems across the entire data lifecycle.
• Build and optimize key components of our high-throughput data delivery platform to ensure data integrity and low-latency delivery.
• Develop new and improve existing components for the Cloudflare Analytical Platform to extend functionality and performance.
• Scale, monitor, and maintain the performance of our large-scale database clusters to accommodate growing data volumes.
• Develop and enhance customer-facing GraphQL APIs, log delivery, and alerting solutions, focusing on performance, reliability, and user experience.
• Identify and remove bottlenecks across our data platforms, from streamlining data ingestion to optimizing query performance.
• Collaborate with other teams across Cloudflare to understand their data needs and build solutions that empower data-driven decisions.
• Collaborate with the ClickHouse open-source community to add new features and contribute to the upstream codebase.
• Participate in developing the next generation of our data platforms, including researching and evaluating new technologies and approaches.

Requirements

• 3+ years of experience in software development covering distributed systems and databases.
• Strong programming skills (Golang preferred), with a deep understanding of software development best practices and principles.
• Hands-on experience with modern observability stacks, including Prometheus, Grafana, and handling high-cardinality metrics at scale.
• Strong knowledge of SQL and database internals, including experience with database design, optimization, and performance tuning.
• Solid foundation in computer science, including algorithms, data structures, distributed systems, and concurrency.
• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills, with a willingness to debug and troubleshoot complex problems at high scale.
• Ability to work collaboratively in a team environment and communicate effectively across teams.

Qualifications

• Experience with ClickHouse is a plus.
• Experience with data streaming technologies (e.g., Kafka, Flink) is a plus.
• Experience developing and scaling APIs, particularly GraphQL, is a plus.
• Experience with Infrastructure as Code tools like SALT or Terraform is a plus.
• Experience with Linux container technologies, such as Docker and Kubernetes, is a plus.

Schedule

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

Benefits

Cloudflare offers a complete package of benefits and programs to support you and your family. The below is a description of our benefits for employees in the United States; 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

Equity

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

What Makes Cloudflare Special?

We’re a highly ambitious, large-scale technology company with a soul. Fundamental to our mission is protecting the free and open Internet through initiatives like:

• Project Galileo: Since 2014, we’ve equipped over 2,400 journalism and civil society organizations in 111 countries with tools to defend against attacks that would otherwise censor their work—at no cost.
• Athenian Project: Created in 2017 to ensure state and local governments have the highest level of protection and reliability for free, providing services to over 425 local government election websites in 33 states.
• 1.1.1.1: A faster, more secure, and privacy-centric public DNS resolver available to everyone, with a commitment to never store client IP addresses or sell user data to advertisers.