Senior Software Engineer, R2 Metadata
Cloudflare · Hybrid
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Subject: Interested in the Senior Software Engineer, R2 Metadata role at Cloudflare
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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
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
R2 is Cloudflare's object storage platform, offering developers durable, reliable storage that integrates seamlessly with Cloudflare's global network and Developer Platform. The R2 Metadata team owns the metadata layer that underpins every R2 operation, every object put, get, list, and delete flows through the systems we build and operate.
R2 is growing rapidly, and the metadata layer must evolve to keep pace. The team is responsible for designing and operating the metadata systems that track every object in R2, building and shipping developer-facing features, and ensuring the reliability and performance of these systems at global scale.
You'll be joining a team that operates at the intersection of distributed databases, large scale storage infrastructure, and edge computing; building systems that need to be correct, fast, and reliable.
What You’ll Do
- Design and implement features in a metadata system, backed by a distributed SQL DB, that serves every R2 API operation, ensuring correctness, performance, and compatibility with the S3 API surface.
- Build and operate production services on Cloudflare Workers and Kubernetes that handle high throughput metadata operations with strong consistency and durability guarantees.
- Own the schema, data model, and query patterns for a metadata layer managing billions of objects across multiple distributed database clusters.
- Own projects end to end; from design docs and schema changes through implementation, testing, deployment, and production monitoring.
- Participate in oncall rotations, drive incident resolution, and write postmortems that improve reliability.
- Use AI tools extensively to accelerate development, debugging, and operational tasks. We expect engineers to leverage AI as a core part of their workflow.
- Collaborate across teams (storage infrastructure, networking, other platform teams) to coordinate capacity planning, API contracts, and cross cutting initiatives.
Examples of desirable skills, knowledge, and experience
- Strong programming skills in TypeScript, Go, or similar languages.
- Experience with distributed databases; schema design, query optimization, indexing strategies, and understanding consistency/performance tradeoffs at scale.
- Experience building or operating large scale distributed systems with strong reliability requirements.
- Familiarity with cloud infrastructure concepts such as object storage, edge computing, or service oriented architectures.
- Understanding of reliability and observability practices: monitoring, alerting, performance tuning, and incident response.
- Strong written and verbal communication skills; ability to explain technical decisions clearly and coordinate across teams.
- Comfortable working with AI coding tools as part of a daily development workflow.
- Experience with Cloudflare Workers, Durable Objects, or edge computing platforms is a strong plus.
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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