Senior Forward Deployed Engineer (DevOps)
Hybrid · San Francisco · USD 194,000-266,000 / year · Hybrid · Posted Sep 23, 2026
At a glance
- Workplace
- Hybrid
- Location
- Hybrid · San Francisco
- Salary
- USD 194,000-266,000 / year
About Cloudflare
- 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.
- Available Locations
- Hybrid | Austin, San Francisco
About the role
- Cloudflare's Senior Forward Deployed Infrastructure Engineers work where Cloudflare's infrastructure meets customer impact.
- As a Forward Deployed Infrastructure Engineer, you will be embedded with one of Cloudflare's most strategic customers, collaborating to ensure modern cloud compute capacity is available, reliable, and ready when needed.
- You will guide new capacity from delivery to production, partnering with Cloudflare's data center and hardware teams to ensure systems pass validation, come online smoothly, and uphold Cloudflare's high standards.
Responsibilities
- Lead bringing new compute capacity online for the customer, collaborating on planning, provisioning, validation, and handover to production.
- Partner with teams to ensure delivered systems meet agreed specifications, defining acceptance criteria and validation workflows across compute, storage, and networking.
- Champion Cloudflare's build, configuration, security, and observability standards prior to capacity launch, ensuring comprehensive monitoring, alerting, and runbooks are established.
- Act as the central point of collaboration between Cloudflare's infrastructure, hardware engineering, data center operations, supply chain, and network teams, alongside the customer's engineering group.
- Serve as the primary technical point of contact for the customer's infrastructure, guiding account strategy and technical direction for supporting Cloudflare resources.
- Engage in operational rhythms with the customer and Cloudflare, including standups, capacity reviews, change management, incident response, and root-cause analysis.
- Develop production-quality automation and tooling for provisioning, validation, and fleet management to continually improve rollout efficiency.
- Partner with the customer to understand future demand, forecast capacity needs, and proactively identify constraints.
- Surface real-world operational issues and platform opportunities with Cloudflare's Infrastructure, Hardware, and Product teams to inform future roadmaps.
- Spend time regularly on-site at customer offices to foster close communication and partnership with their engineering teams.
Requirements
- Solid experience in infrastructure engineering, SRE, or production engineering, with a track record of running and scaling large-scale production systems.
- Practical experience bringing server capacity online, encompassing provisioning, imaging, configuration management, and fleet-scale lifecycle management.
- Familiarity with server hardware, firmware, BMC/IPMI/Redfish, and diagnostics, including setting validation standards and partnering with on-site technicians.
- Strong understanding of Linux systems and core networking principles including TCP/IP, BGP, DNS, load balancing, and data center topologies.
- Proficiency in languages such as Go, Python, or Rust, along with experience using infrastructure-as-code and configuration management tools such as Terraform, Ansible, or Salt.
- Experience supporting mission-critical services, including on-call rotations, incident response, SLO management, and reliability engineering.
- Familiarity with monitoring, metrics, and logging frameworks such as Prometheus, Grafana, or ClickHouse.
- Exposure to Kubernetes or similar platforms and workload scheduling on newly provisioned capacity.
- Demonstrated ability to coordinate complex, multi-team delivery efforts across regions and time zones with clear communication and alignment.
- Ability to engage comfortably in strategic technical discussions with executive-level stakeholders.
Preferred qualifications
- Experience with GPUs or specialized accelerators
- Interest or experience in leveraging modern AI tools to streamline automation, debugging, and documentation
- Prior experience at a hyperscaler, cloud provider, or large-scale data center environment
- Familiarity with Cloudflare's platform and network architecture
- Experience in customer-embedded or partner-facing technical infrastructure roles
- A history of sharing knowledge, such as technical writing, internal mentorship, open-source contributions, or community presentations
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
- Short and Long Term Disability Insurance
- Life & Accident Insurance
Skills
- Linux
- Go
- Python
- Rust
- Terraform
- Ansible
- Salt
- Kubernetes
- Prometheus
- Grafana
- ClickHouse
- TCP/IP
Show all 14 skills
- BGP
- DNS
