about 7 hours ago

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Principal Systems Engineer, R2 Storage

$230k - $286k

Cloudflare

Remote Hybrid
About Us

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. 

We realize people do not fit into neat boxes. We are looking for curious and empathetic individuals who are committed to developing themselves and learning new skills, and we are ready to help you do that. We cannot complete our mission without building a diverse and inclusive team. We hire the best people based on an evaluation of their potential and support them throughout their time at Cloudflare. Come join us! 

Locations: Austin, TX | New York, NY | San Francisco, CA | London, UK

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, designed to offer developers a durable and reliable storage solution that integrates seamlessly with Cloudflare’s Developer Platform, including Workers and other compute products. The R2 team builds foundational infrastructure that operates at massive scale and powers critical workloads across Cloudflare’s global network–designing and maintaining distributed systems that handle high throughput, provide strong consistency and durability guarantees, and support a growing number of developer-facing features.

You’ll be joining a highly motivated team that owns the full stack of R2: tackling complex problems in distributed systems with a focus on reliability and performance at a global scale.

What You’ll Do

  • Set the technical direction for some of our most critical and complex infrastructure projects.
  • Drive large-scale architectural decisions that span multiple teams and services.
  • Design and implement systems that operate reliably under heavy load and at massive scale.
  • Lead technical investigations and break down ambiguous problems into clear plans of action.
  • Collaborate closely with engineers across teams, product managers, and infrastructure stakeholders to align goals and deliver on timelines.
  • Be a key contributor to our roadmap — helping shape the future of R2’s architecture, performance, and reliability.

Examples of desirable skills, knowledge, and experience

  • Experience setting the architecture and technical direction for large, cross-team, and cross-functional engineering efforts.
  • Strong systems-level programming skills.
  • A deep understanding of distributed systems concepts such as consistency, consensus, data replication, and partition tolerance.
  • Proven experience building and maintaining high-throughput, low-latency systems.
  • Strong written and verbal communication skills; ability to explain technical decisions clearly and drive alignment.
  • Comfortable operating in fast-paced environments with tight deadlines and evolving priorities.
  • Experience with storage systems, networking, or large-scale cloud infrastructure is a strong plus.

Compensation

Compensation may be adjusted depending on work location.

  • For New York City, Washington, and California (excluding Bay Area) based hires: Estimated annual salary of $230,000 - $281,000
  • For Bay Area-based hires: Estimated annual salary of $234,000 - $286,000

Equity

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

Benefits

Cloudflare offers a complete package of benefits and programs to support you and your family.  Our benefits programs can help you pay health care expenses, support caregiving, build capital for the future and make life a little easier and fun!  The below is a description of our benefits for employees in the United States, and 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

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, weve 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, weve 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!

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 persons, 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.