Description
About the Role
Cloudflare's Forward Deployed Engineer, Professional Services provides customers with a dedicated, hands-on technical expert embedded directly within their environment. This is not a traditional support or purely advisory engagement,it is a staff-augmentation model where you act as an extension of the customer's team, taking the lead in managing, optimizing, and evolving their Cloudflare solutions.
Key Responsibilities
Embed & Integrate
- Become a trusted, embedded member of the customer's technical team, operating within their tools, processes, and change-management frameworks.
- Follow the customer's change-management process for all hands-on modifications, ensuring risk mitigation and operational continuity.
Hands-On Execution
- Design, configure, and optimize Cloudflare solutions directly within the customer environment.
- Implement changes, build prototypes, develop automation scripts, and troubleshoot issues in real time.
Strategic Advisory & Architecture
- Provide proactive architectural guidance, roadmap alignment, and best-practice recommendations.
- Produce Solution Designs, HLDs, LLDs, databuilds, procedures, test plans, deployment plans, migration plans, as-builts, and other artifacts necessary for delivery and smooth handoff.
Workshops & Knowledge Transfer
- Lead technical workshops, knowledge-transfer sessions, and special-event preparation (e.g., product launches, traffic events, security drills, quarterly business reviews).
- Ensure continuity by documenting decisions, runbooks, and configurations in the customer's collaborative workspace.
Customer Advocacy & Liaison
- Act as the voice of the customer within Cloudflare, surfacing product gaps, feature requests, and escalation items to Engineering, Support, and Product.
- Partner closely with the Account Executive, Solutions Engineer, Customer Success Manager, Delivery Leaders and other stakeholders to align on account strategy and expansion opportunities.
Experience & Skills
Core Requirements
- 15+ years of experience in a customer-facing technical role.
- Recognized Expertise in one of the following focus areas with a proven track record of leading complex, enterprise-scale engagements:
- Applications , Advanced tuning of WAF, Bot Management, API Gateway, DDoS protection, Rate Limiting, and performance optimization for global web properties. Experience designing security architectures for large-scale, multi-zone deployments.
- Network , Hands-on management of Magic Transit, BYOIP, complex L3/L4 routing, DDoS resilience, and low-latency global connectivity design. Experience with network transformations and MPLS/SD-WAN migrations.
- Leadership & Mentorship , Demonstrated experience mentoring junior team members, leading technical workshops, and contributing to the development of service methodologies, best practices, and reusable assets.
- Strong Networking Foundation , Expert-level understanding of the OSI model, TCP/IP, TLS, DNS, and HTTP.
- Hands-On Technical Skills , Demonstrated ability to implement, configure, and troubleshoot complex solutions. Experience with infrastructure-as-code tools (e.g., Terraform) and scripting (e.g., Python, JavaScript, Bash) is highly desirable.
- Project & Program Management , Ability to manage multiple competing priorities, work to deadlines, and deliver results in ambiguous or fast-moving environments. Experience scoping and estimating complex engagements.
- Communication & Executive Presence , Exceptional verbal and written communication skills. Ability to translate complex technical concepts for both technical and executive audiences.
- Regional Experience , Experience working with enterprise customers in APJC. Understanding of regional compliance requirements, business culture, and technical ecosystems.
Preferred Qualifications
- Experience in heavily regulated industries (Public Sector, Financial Services, Healthcare) or complex legacy-migration environments.
- Relevant industry certifications: CISSP, CCIE, AWS, GCP, Azure certifications, or equivalent.
- Familiarity with Agile methodologies and enterprise change-management processes.
- Familiarity with Zero Trust / SASE , Securing distributed workforces with Access, Gateway, CASB, RBI, and DLP. Proven experience implementing Zero Trust architectures at enterprise scale.
- Prior experience with Cloudflare's product suite and edge-network ecosystem.