Principal Software Engineer: Distributed Systems (Config, Test, & Deployment)

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: Washington DC, Austin, NYC, San Francisco About the Dept Cloudflare’s engineers build and operate the software that helps power 25+ million Internet properties and millions of businesses around the world. Across our engineering organizations, we have opportunities for high caliber, curious and empathetic people to take on big challenges and build some of the best skills in the industry. We’re looking for talented team members to help build high-growth products, help scale our expanding network, build tools to improve availability, performance, uptime, and response times, and make systems failure-resistant and ready-to-scale. Cloudflare is a fast growing company and engineering is an ever-evolving function with teams being formed and redefined often. You will interview for an engineering role in the Intent Management organization which is part of the overall Foundational Engineering team at Cloudflare, which builds and operates many of the fundamental systems powering Cloudflare’s products. What you'll do Too many of Cloudflare's most impactful incidents have had unsafe change as a root cause. The Intent Management exists to make safe change the easy button and this is the most senior IC role in that organization, reporting directly to the Senior Director. You will own the technical coherence of a platform that spans globally distributed key-value storage, progressive release and configuration delivery, and the testing and health-mediation systems that prove change is safe. You'll work at the seams that matter most by translating what Cloudflare's Edge and control-plane platforms need into the primitives our teams build. You'll move fluidly between writing production code, designing new systems, and reviewing the proposals of other senior engineers. You’ll also help us work out how best to integrate LLMs into our processes and systems. You will be working alongside engineers who have presented at DevOps Days, Config Management Camp 2024 & 2025, Monitorama, OSMC, KubeCon and PromCon. Together you will deliver on the key Health Mediated Deployment projects that are being tracked through senior leadership of Cloudflare up to the founders. Examples of desirable skills, knowledge and experience • 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. • 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. • Experience designing, building and managing high volume, global scale software applications. • Expert in at least one modern strongly-typed programming language • Knowledge of API design standards, patterns and best practices • Experience working with top tier LLMs to plan, write, test, and deploy software Bonus Points • Strong interpersonal and communication skills with a bias towards action • Experience with scaling and simplifying high scale Configuration Management systems • Familiarity with Google’s Prodspec and Annealing systems • Experience with Kubernetes • Experience with RocksDB or similar data stores • Experience with health checking and probe platforms at significant scale • 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. Compensation Compensation may be adjusted depending on work location. • For Bay Area based hires: Estimated annual salary of $230,000 - $288,000 • For Washington and New York City based hired: Estimated annual salary of $220,000 - $275,000 • For Austin based hired: Estimated annual salary of $200,000 - $250,000 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 descrip