Senior Software Engineer, Distributed Databases
Cloudflare · In-Office
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Subject: Interested in the Senior Software Engineer, Distributed Databases role at Cloudflare
Hi Riley — I came across the Senior Software Engineer, Distributed Databases opening and wanted to reach out directly. I've spent the last few years doing exactly this kind of work, and Cloudflare stood out because…
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About the role
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.
Locations: Austin, TX | Hybrid
About the Department
Emerging Technologies & Incubation (ETI) is where new and bold products are built and released within Cloudflare. Rather than being constrained by the structures which make Cloudflare a massively successful business, we are able to leverage them to deliver entirely new tools and products to our customers. Cloudflare’s edge and network make it possible to solve problems at massive scale and efficiency which would be impossible for almost any other organization.
About the Team
ETI's Storage Infrastructure team is responsible for the core storage layer that underpins many of ETI's stateful services. Our scope ranges from managing the physical hardware to operating the distributed databases and storage systems built upon it. We run this infrastructure globally across Cloudflare's network, which presents unique and complex engineering puzzles. We navigate efficiently expanding storage capacity, optimizing rebuild operations, and coordinating operations across failure domains to uphold durability. While other service teams focus on product development, our mission is to ensure the underlying storage is reliable, fast, and scalable.
You'll be joining a highly motivated team that is building the next generation of Cloudflare’s distributed storage services.
What You'll Do
In this role, you will own the distributed database systems that run across Cloudflare's edge network and power services such as R2, Durable Objects, and Workers KV. We expect you to go a layer deeper than a database operator to fix the underlying problems. You will own your code from inception through production rollout. On any given day, you might:
- Add new features and extensions to the database to meet the needs of R2, Durable Objects, and Workers KV
- Hold the bar on correctness through code review, testing, and staged rollout so defects are caught before customer impact
- Tune performance and resource utilization across staged rollouts and production
- Optimize data placement and replication for our edge topology, and partner with service teams on schema design and query performance
- Build the observability and tooling that make the database supportable across its consumers
You can expect to interact with a variety of languages and technologies including Go, Rust, Saltstack, and Terraform.
Examples of Desirable Skills, Knowledge, and Experience
- Source-code level experience contributing to a distributed database or distributed storage system. Examples include distributed SQL databases (CockroachDB, TiDB / TiKV, YugabyteDB, Spanner), Raft-based or Paxos-based storage systems (etcd, FoundationDB), wide-column stores (Cassandra, ScyllaDB), document databases (MongoDB), or comparable systems
- Strong programming skills in Go, Rust, C++, or another systems language, with a willingness to be productive in Go for this role
- Deep understanding of distributed systems concepts: consensus protocols (Raft or Paxos), data replication, MVCC, transaction isolation levels, fault tolerance, and partition tolerance
- Experience reading, debugging, and modifying complex codebases under correctness constraints (concurrency, durability, consistency)
- Familiarity with LSM-tree storage engines (RocksDB, LevelDB, Pebble, SlateDB) or comparable storage internals
- Familiarity with storage fundamentals: block devices, filesystems, SSD characteristics
- Experience building and maintaining high-throughput, low-latency systems
- Understanding of network fundamentals as they relate to distributed storage: bandwidth constraints, latency tradeoffs, cross-datacenter replication
- Experience with infrastructure configuration tooling and infrastructure as code
- Experience with monitoring tools (Prometheus, Grafana) and analytics tools (Clickhouse) for operating production database systems
- Strong written and verbal communication skills and ability to explain technical decisions clearly
- Comfortable operating in fast-paced environments with tight deadlines and evolving priorities
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 hr@cloudflare.com or via mail at 101 Townsend St. San Francisco, CA 94107.
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