Cloudflare · 2 days ago
Principal Systems Engineer
Washington, DC
Full-time
Hybrid
Lead/Staff
$230K/yr - $281K/yr
10+ years expCloudflare is on a mission to help build a better Internet and is seeking a Principal Systems Engineer to join their Product Platform Task Force. This role involves leading complex technical projects, architecting security-critical systems, and mentoring senior engineers to enhance the company's infrastructure and engineering culture.
AnalyticsEnterprise SoftwareSecurityWeb Hosting
Responsibilities
Define technical strategy and lead execution of high-impact, cross-cutting initiatives that benefit the entire engineering organization, such as service-to-service authentication systems, RBAC/authorization frameworks, ultra-distributed architectures leveraging Cloudflare's edge network, API layer improvements, observability infrastructure, and shared services that span our product portfolio
Architect and implement security-critical systems including authentication, authorization, and access control mechanisms that work seamlessly across our distributed infrastructure, ensuring both robust security postures and excellent developer experiences for teams building on these platforms
Design and build ultra-distributed systems that take full advantage of Cloudflare's massive global edge network, including edge computing with Workers and Durable Objects, ensuring our services deliver exceptional performance and reliability to users worldwide while managing the complexity of geo-distributed state and coordination
Set architectural standards and technical direction for our Product Platform stack—including Go services, Python pipelines, TypeScript edge computing (Cloudflare Workers/Durable Objects), and PostgreSQL data layer—ensuring decisions balance immediate business needs with long-term scalability, maintainability, and engineering velocity
Identify critical technical debt, systemic inefficiencies, and infrastructure gaps across the organization, building business cases and driving consensus among leadership to fund and execute solutions that might otherwise fall through the cracks of product-focused roadmaps
Serve as a technical force multiplier by embedding with tiger teams or product groups that need deep infrastructure expertise, providing architectural leadership, hands-on implementation where needed, and ensuring projects ship with production-grade reliability, security, and performance
Mentor and elevate senior engineers across the organization through code reviews, architectural discussions, and technical design reviews, establishing patterns and practices for distributed systems, security, and edge computing that raise the bar for engineering excellence throughout the company
Qualification
Required
10+ years of software engineering experience with a demonstrated history of leading complex, organization-wide technical initiatives that delivered measurable improvements to system performance, reliability, security, developer productivity, or engineering culture
Deep expertise in building distributed systems and production infrastructure at scale, with proficiency in Go and strong working knowledge of Python/TypeScript; proven ability to make sound architectural decisions for systems that span multiple data centers, regions, or edge locations
Strong understanding of authentication, authorization, and security fundamentals including experience designing and implementing service-to-service authentication systems, RBAC/permission models, identity management, or similar security-critical infrastructure
Extensive experience with PostgreSQL or similar relational databases at scale, including advanced optimization techniques, replication strategies, and understanding the tradeoffs of distributed data storage and consistency models
Strong track record of technical leadership and influence without direct authority, including driving consensus on technical decisions across multiple teams, mentoring senior engineers, and establishing architectural patterns that are widely adopted across an organization
Exceptional ability to navigate ambiguous problem spaces, identify the highest-impact technical work, and drive projects autonomously from conception through adoption—balancing pragmatic execution with long-term technical excellence
Please be prepared to discuss specific examples of organization-wide technical initiatives you've led, particularly distributed systems or security infrastructure, their measurable business impact, and how you influenced technical direction across multiple teams
Preferred
Deep experience with Cloudflare's developer platform, particularly Cloudflare Workers, Durable Objects, and architecting ultra-distributed applications for edge computing environments at global scale
Previous experience as a Principal Engineer, Staff+ engineer, or technical leader on platform, infrastructure, or task force teams that operate outside traditional product roadmaps with a focus on enabling engineering organizations
Proven expertise in building developer platforms, service mesh architectures, zero-trust security systems, API gateways, or other foundational distributed infrastructure that significantly improved engineering velocity or operational excellence
Experience architecting and operating billing systems, usage metering, or other high-stakes platform components that require exceptional reliability, accuracy, and work correctly in distributed, eventually-consistent environments
Public evidence of technical leadership such as conference talks on distributed systems or security, widely-read technical blog posts, significant open source contributions, or published architectural patterns that have been adopted by the broader engineering community
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
401(k) Retirement Savings Plan
Employee Stock Participation Plan
Flexible paid time off covering vacation and sick leave
Leave programs, including parental, pregnancy health, medical, and bereavement leave
Company
Cloudflare
Cloudflare is a web performance and security company that provides online services to protect and accelerate websites online.
1001-5000 employees
H1B Sponsorship
Cloudflare has a track record of offering H1B sponsorships. Please note that this does not
guarantee sponsorship for this specific role. Below presents additional info for your
reference. (Data Powered by US Department of Labor)
Distribution of Different Job Fields Receiving Sponsorship
Represents job field similar to this job
Trends of Total Sponsorships
2025 (117)
2024 (115)
2023 (66)
2022 (98)
2021 (83)
2020 (37)
Funding
Current Stage
Public CompanyTotal Funding
$2.08BKey Investors
Franklin TempletonFidelityUnion Square Ventures
2025-06-13Post Ipo Debt· $1.75B
2019-09-12IPO
2019-03-12Series E· $150M
Leadership Team
Matthew Prince
CEO & Co-Founder
Lee Holloway
Co-Founder & Lead Engineer
Recent News
2026-01-11
2026-01-11
2026-01-11
Company data provided by crunchbase