Data Center Operations Engineer

Cloudflare, Inc.; United States; On-site; USD 80,000 - 120,000; Full time

Job summary

Cloudflare, Inc. is seeking Data Center Engineers to join our on-site team across the United States. You will help deploy and maintain new data center sites, ensuring hardware health and production readiness.

You will rack, cable, replace equipment, and troubleshoot with BMC/IPMI, working with partner teams to keep sites running. On-call rotations and incident response are part of the role, with opportunities to apply AI-driven improvements.

Qualifications

• Hands-on hardware troubleshooting experience.
• Ability to rack, cabling and install servers and network gear.
• Strong on-site engineering and collaboration skills.

Responsibilities

• Site builds: receive, inspect hardware, rack/stack, run structured cabling.
• Verify integrator work against build specs; ensure production-ready sites.
• Triage and troubleshoot server hardware using BMC/IPMI, logs, and diagnostics.
• Replace components and whole systems (servers, switches, optics) safely.
• Handle on-call incidents and document actions for root-cause analysis.
• Use AI tools and automation to improve runbooks and workflows.

Skills

Hardware troubleshooting

On-site engineering

Tools

BMC/IPMI

Job 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. 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: Boston, MA | Dallas, TX | Salt Lake City, UT (This role requires you to be onsite 5 days a week in one of our locations)

About the Department

Infrastructure Operations builds and manages the data center infrastructure behind Cloudflare’s global network. The organization brings together engineering, operations, hardware and logistics teams that plan, deploy, operate and maintain our footprint in hundreds of cities worldwide.

In this role, you’ll help extend that footprint with a new generation of data center sites across the United States.

About the Role

We’re looking for Data Center Engineers to be the hands, eyes and judgment on the ground at our new sites. You’ll work on-site every day at your home data center, helping bring it online and keeping its hardware healthy once it’s in production.

You’ll rack, cable and replace equipment, troubleshoot servers and network gear well past a simple parts swap, and keep every asset accurately documented from the moment it arrives. You’ll work alongside colocation staff, integrators and partner teams, and support other sites remotely when the team needs you. Experienced engineers will have room to act as the technical lead for their site, mentor others, and help set the standards the team uses everywhere.

We’re building these sites to run with less manual effort than traditional data centers. When something breaks, we expect you to fix it for good, not just for today, and to use AI and automation to make the fix stick, whether that means a better runbook, a script, or a change to how the team works.

This role is hands-on at the physical layer: hardware, cabling, and Layer 1/Layer 2 connectivity. You’ll use the command line to troubleshoot servers and Layer 2 network issues, but network configuration and server provisioning are owned by partner engineering teams.

What’S You’ll Do

Site Builds

Support integrated site builds: receive and inspect hardware, rack and stack equipment, and run and dress structured cabling to standard.

Verify integrator and contractor work against build specifications, drive defects to resolution, and make sure sites are production-ready before handoff.

Break/Fix and Troubleshooting

• Triage and troubleshoot server hardware using BMC/IPMI, hardware logs, diagnostics and firmware tools. Find the root cause instead of swapping parts until something works.
• Replace components and whole systems, including servers, switches and optics, safely and with minimal disruption.
• Troubleshoot Layer 1 and Layer 2 issues: console into network devices, read interface and link state from the command line, inspect and clean optics, check light levels, and test fiber with a light meter or OTDR.

On-Call and Incidents

Take part in an on-call rotation and respond on site to incidents affecting hardware at your data center.

Document what happened and what you did, and contribute to root-cause analysis and follow-up actions.

AI, Automation and Continuous Improvement

• Solve problems for good. When an issue repeats, find the underlying cause and change the process, runbook or tooling so it doesn't come back.
• Use AI tools as part of your daily work: to speed up troubleshooting, interpret hardware and network logs, draft and improve documentation and runbooks, and summarize incidents.
• Find repetitive manual work and remove it with scripting, automation or AI-assisted workflows, or turn it into clear requirements for too