Distributed Systems Engineer - Data Platform (Delivery, Database, Retrieval)

Cloudflare; Seattle (WA); On-site; USD 150,000 - 206,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical Insurance

401(k) Plan

Stock Participation Plan

Flexible PTO

Parental Leave

Job summary

Cloudflare is seeking a systems-oriented backend engineer in Seattle to build and operate distributed data systems that power logs, analytics, and alerts across our global network. You will primarily code in Go, own the data lifecycle, and work across ingestion, processing, and analytical storage.

Ideal candidates have 3+ years in backend or distributed systems, strong Go skills (or other systems languages), and experience with production services, monitoring, and incident response.

Qualifications

• 3+ years in backend, infra, db, or distributed data systems.
• Strong Go or systems language skills; able to pick up Go quickly.
• Experience with production services including deployment, monitoring, and incident response.
• Solid understanding of distributed systems concepts.
• Experience with high-throughput or low-latency data processing.

Responsibilities

• Design, build, and operate reliable distributed systems handling large data volumes.
• Develop backend services and data platform components in Go.
• Improve data integrity, delivery latency, and query performance.
• Handle failure with backpressure, retries, idempotency, replication, graceful degradation.
• Define SLOs, monitor health, plan capacity, respond to incidents.
• Participate in on-call rotations.

Skills

Go programming

Distributed systems

Backend development

Incident response

Collaboration

Tools

Prometheus

Grafana

ClickHouse

Kafka

Kubernetes

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. 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

• Atlanta, US
• Austin, US
• Denver, US
• Lisbon, Portugal
• Seattle, US
• Washington DC, US

Applications will be accepted until November 23, 2026.

About The Role

Cloudflare’s Data Org builds the systems that ingest, process, store, and retrieve data generated across our global network. These systems power the logs, analytics, and alerts that give customers near real-time visibility into the security, reliability, and performance of their Internet properties. We are looking for systems-oriented backend engineers who enjoy solving distributed‑systems problems at large scale. You will build primarily in Go, operate the systems you create, and work across the data lifecycle, from high‑throughput ingestion and delivery to analytical storage and customer‑facing retrieval.

Engineers in this role typically develop depth in one of two areas:

• Analytical database systems: Building and operating our ClickHouse‑based analytical platform, improving database performance, reliability, and scalability.
• Data delivery and retrieval: Building streaming pipelines, public APIs, log delivery integrations, and alerting systems that make customer data accessible and actionable.

We are looking for strong backend and systems fundamentals, production operational experience, and demonstrated depth in at least one of these areas.

What You’ll Do

• Design, build, and operate reliable distributed systems that process very large volumes of data.
• Develop and optimise backend services and data platform components, primarily in Go.
• Improve data integrity, delivery latency, query performance, availability, and operational efficiency.
• Build systems that handle failure safely through techniques such as backpressure, retries, idempotency, replication, and graceful degradation.
• Define service‑level objectives, monitor production health, plan capacity, and respond to incidents.
• Diagnose performance bottlenecks across ingestion, processing, storage, and retrieval.

Depending on your area of focus

• Build and operate large‑scale ClickHouse clusters and contribute improvements to the ClickHouse ecosystem.
• Develop data delivery pipelines that route data from Cloudflare’s global network to customer destinations.
• Build and scale GraphQL APIs, log delivery integrations, and near real‑time alerting products.
• Collaborate with product and engineering teams to understand their data needs and design pragmatic solutions.
• Evaluate technologies and contribute to the next generation of Cloudflare’s data platform.
• Participate in an on‑call rotation for the production systems owned by your team.

What We’re Looking For

• At least three years of professional software engineering experience building backend, infrastructure, database, or distributed‑data systems.
• Strong Go programming skills, or substantial systems programming experience (Rust, C++) with the ability to become productive in Go quickly.
• Experience building and operating production services, including deployment, monitoring, capacity planning, incident response, and debugging.
• A solid understanding of distributed‑systems concepts, including concurrency, consistency, fault tolerance, partitioning, and data integrity.
• Experience with high‑throughput or low‑latency data processing.
• Hands‑on experience with observability tools such as Prometheus and Grafana, including monitoring high‑cardinality workloads.
• Strong analytical and troubleshooting skills, particularly for complex production problems.
• Clear communication and an ability to collaborate across engineering and product teams.

Demonstrated depth in at least one of the following areas

• Database systems: SQL, analytical databases, database internals, query optimisation, performance tuning, or operating large database clusters.
• Data delivery and retrieval: Streaming systems, event‑driven architectures, data pipelines, API development, or customer‑facing data integrations.

Helpful Experience

• ClickHouse or another large‑scale analytical database.
• Kafka, Flink, or similar streaming technologies.
• GraphQL or other high‑volume API technologies.
• Terraform, Salt, or other Infrastructure as Code tooling.
• Docker, Kubernetes, or Linux container technologies.
• Contributions to open‑source database or distributed‑systems projects.

Compensation

Compensation may be adjusted depending on work location.

• For Portugal based hires: Estimated annual salary is between €54,000 - €91,000.
• For Colorado based hires: Estimated annual salary of $136,000 - $187,000.
• For Washington based hires: Estimated annual salary of $150,000 - $206,000.

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 description of our benefits for employees in the United States, and benefits may vary for employees based outside the U.S.

Health & Welfare Benefits

• Medical/Rx Insurance
• Dental Insurance
• Vision Insurance
• Flexible Spending Accounts
• Commuter Spending Accounts
• Fertility & Family Forming Benefits
• On‑demand mental health support and Employee Assistance Program
• Global Travel Medical Insurance

Financial Benefits

• Short and Long Term Disability Insurance
• Life & Accident Insurance
• 401(k) Retirement Savings Plan
• Employee Stock Participation Plan

Time Off

• Flexible paid time off covering vacation and sick leave
• Leave programs, including parental, pregnancy health, medical, and bereavement leave

What Makes Cloudflare Special?

We’re not just a highly ambitious, large-scale technology company. We’re a highly ambitious, large-scale technology company with a soul. Fundamental to our mission to help build a better Internet is protecting the free and open Internet.

Project Galileo

Since 2014, we've equipped more than 2,400 journalism and civil society organizations in 111 countries with powerful tools to defend themselves against attacks that would otherwise censor their work, technology already used by Cloudflare’s enterprise customers—at no cost.

Athenian Project

In 2017, we created the Athenian Project to ensure that state and local governments have the highest level of protection and reliability for free, so that their constituents have access to election information and voter registration. Since the project, we've provided services to more than 425 local government election websites in 33 states.

1.1.1.1

We released 1.1.1.1 to help fix the foundation of the Internet by building a faster, more secure and privacy‑centric public DNS resolver. This is available publicly for everyone to use - it is the first consumer‑focused service Cloudflare has ever released. Here’s the deal - we don’t store client IP addresses never, ever. We will continue to abide by our privacy commitment and ensure that no user data is sold to advertisers or used to target consumers.

This position may require access to information protected under U.S. export control laws, including the U.S. Export Administration Regulations. Please note that any offer of employment may be conditioned on your authorization to receive software or technology controlled under these U.S. export laws without sponsorship for an export license.

Equal Opportunity Employment

Cloudflare is proud to be an equal opportunity employer. We are committed to providing equal employment opportunity for all people and place great value in both diversity and inclusiveness. All qualified applicants will be considered for employment without regard to their, or any other person's, perceived or actual race, color, religion, sex, gender, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, national origin, ancestry, citizenship, age, physical or mental disability, medical condition, family care status, or any other basis protected by law. We are an AA/Veterans/Disabled Employer.

Accommodations

Cloudflare provides reasonable accommodations to qualified individuals with disabilities. Please tell us if you require a reasonable accommodation to apply for a job. Examples of reasonable accommodations include, but are not limited to, changing the application process, providing documents in an alternate format, using a sign language interpreter, or using specialized equipment. If you require a reasonable accommodation to apply for a job, please contact us via e-mail at [e-mail] or via mail at 101 Townsend St. San Francisco, CA 94107.