Description
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.
As a Forward Deployed Engineer, you will be embedded within one of Cloudflare’s most strategic global customers, working side-by-side with their engineering teams to build and deploy solutions using Cloudflare’s platform.
Responsibilities
Deep Technical Embedding: Serve as the dedicated, long-term technical partner within a strategic customer’s engineering organization, operating as a trusted extension of their team.
Production-Level Engineering: Design, build, and deploy production-ready code and configurations directly into customer infrastructure using the Cloudflare platform.
Technical Accountability: Own the account's technical success across the entire Cloudflare portfolio. Serve as the primary technical point of contact, with other Cloudflare technical resources taking direction from your technical strategy for the account.
Operational Integration: Participate in customer engineering rituals, including daily standups, design reviews, and real-time incident response.
Platform Advocacy & Adoption: Identify opportunities to accelerate the adoption of Cloudflare services, unlocking new capabilities across the customer’s tech stack.
Platform Breadth & Depth: Deep technical competence in building production applications on a modern stack, combined with the willingness and ability to go deep on all Cloudflare product areas. From Workers to security, networking, and observability.
Feedback Loop & Product Influence: Surface real-world edge cases and product gaps directly to Cloudflare’s Product and Engineering teams to influence the developer platform roadmap.
Strategic Relationship Management: Establish and maintain trusted technical relationships with senior leadership (Staff+ engineers, Directors, and VPs).
On-Site Presence: Maintain a regular on-site presence at customer locations to foster deep collaboration and cultural alignment.
Requirements
Proven Engineering Pedigree: 5+ years of professional software engineering experience. You are a builder at heart, with a track record of delivering production-grade systems, not just advising on them.
Production Ownership & Operational Maturity: You have owned mission-critical services with real-world users. You understand the gravity of on-call rotations, the urgency of incident response, and the architectural rigor required to maintain “five nines” uptime.
Active Practitioner: You are currently in the IDE. You have a “ship-first” mentality and maintain a high velocity, staying current with modern frameworks, languages, and deployment patterns.
Full-Stack Architectural Depth: Broad technical fluency across the entire stack,from frontend performance and backend logic to database optimization and distributed infrastructure.
AI-Native Development: You have integrated AI-augmented workflows (e.g., Windsurf, OpenCode) into your daily development cycle to accelerate prototyping and delivery.
Systems Design & Strategic Thinking: Ability to decompose complex business requirements into scalable, resilient technical architectures. You can visualize the “big picture” without losing sight of the implementation details.
Cloud Ecosystem Fluency: Deep experience with at least one major cloud provider (AWS, GCP, or Azure), including an understanding of serverless, networking, and security primitives.
High Agency & Navigating Ambiguity: You are a self-starter who thrives in “zero-to-one” environments. You don’t wait for a ticket; you identify the problem and own the solution from end-to-end.
Executive Presence: Comfortable engaging in high-stakes technical and strategic discussions with VP-level stakeholders, with the ability to translate complex engineering trade-offs into business impact.
Nice to Have
Direct experience building on Cloudflare Workers, or the broader Cloudflare Developer Platform.
Previous experience at a fast-paced startup or in a customer-facing engineering role where you operated directly within a partner’s codebase.
A visible public profile, including open-source contributions, technical blogging, or speaking engagements at industry conferences.
Compensation
For Seattle Area based hires: Estimated annual salary of $185,000 - $254,000
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!
Experience Level: senior Employment Type: full-time Workplace Type: hybrid Category: Engineering Industry: Technology Salary Range: $185,000 - $254,000 Required Skills:
- Proven Engineering Pedigree
- Production Ownership & Operational Maturity
- Active Practitioner
- Full-Stack Architectural Depth
- AI-Native Development
- Systems Design & Strategic Thinking
- Cloud Ecosystem Fluency
- High Agency & Navigating Ambiguity
- Executive Presence
Preferred Skills:
- Direct experience building on Cloudflare Workers, or the broader Cloudflare Developer Platformових