Manager, Presales Customer Engineering

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. 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: Sydney, Australia What you will do as a Manager, Customer Engineering The Manager, Customer Engineering leads a team of Customer Engineers (CE) who own the full customer technical journey from initial discovery through long-term adoption, retention, and account expansion. Sitting within the GTM organization and reporting to a Customer Engineering Senior Leader, you will be responsible for building, coaching, and enabling a high-performing team of quota-carrying technologists. You will ensure your team leverages AI-augmented workflows to eliminate administrative toil and focus on high-value architectural design, technical validation, and the delivery of measurable business outcomes across the entire customer journey. This is a player-coach role where you have the ability and willingness to step into the field and lead by example. You will manage daily, forecast weekly, and hire always while remaining deeply connected to the technical, commercial, and operational realities of the customer engineering motion. Key Responsibilities • Team Development & Performance: Recruit, onboard, coach, and retain a diverse team of Customer Engineers across multiple levels. Set clear expectations, conduct regular 1:1s and performance reviews, and maintain a strong feedback culture that accelerates growth. • Pipeline & Forecasting: Manage your team's opportunity pipeline, forecast new business and expansion outcomes weekly, and own the accuracy of your team's number. Identify risk early and coach reps on deal strategy. • Commercial Accountability: Be accountable for your team's achievement of new business acquisition, expansion, adoption, and consumption targets. Partner closely with Sales, Customer Experience, Professional Services, and regional leadership on account planning and execution. • Deal Coaching & Technical Strategy: Accompany Customer Engineers on critical customer calls, QBRs, discovery sessions, and PoC reviews. Provide real-time coaching on architecture, commercial positioning, and executive communication. • Operational Excellence: Ensure the team operates efficiently within established GTM processes (forecasting, opportunity management, account planning, QBR cadence). Use dashboards and operational reviews to spot trends, unblock friction, and drive consistency. • AI & Productivity Enablement: Champion the adoption of AI agents, LLMs, and automation tools across the team. Identify opportunities to reduce toil, improve response quality, and scale technical advisory impact. • Cross-Functional Leadership: Serve as the voice of your team and your territory in leadership meetings. Partner with Product, Engineering, Support, Marketing, and Enablement to surface field feedback and advocate for customer and team needs. • Culture & Values: Model Cloudflare's values and build an inclusive, high-performance team culture rooted in curiosity, ownership, and continuous improvement. Minimum Qualifications • Experience: 5+ Years of proven experience leading quota carrying customer-facing technical teams in a SaaS, cloud, or infrastructure environment. Track record of hiring, developing, and retaining technical talent. Prior quota-carrying Solutions Engineering, Customer Engineering, Sales Engineering, or related technical field experience is strongly preferred. • Architectural Mindset: Ability to white-board, design, and articulate complex enterprise network and security architectures clearly enough to guide coaching and deal review. • Consultative & Advisory Skills: Excellent communication skills with the ability to translate deeply technical concepts into business outcomes for both hands-on engineers and C-level executives. • Revenue Acumen: Demonstrated success owning and forecasting a revenue number, preferably in an enterprise B2B SaaS or infrastructure environment. Deep understanding of enterprise sales cycles, SaaS metrics, ACV, renewal, and expansion motions. • Leadership & Coaching: Excellent people management skills with the ability to coach technical sellers through complex deals, difficult conversations, and career growth. Comfortable giving direct, actionable feedback. • Communication: Exceptional written and verbal communication with the ability to influence executives, peers, and cross-functional teams. Capable of representing the team in executive QBRs and regional business reviews. • AI Proficiency: Familiarity with AI-augmented w