Senior Edge Systems Engineer — Linux & Fleet Automation

Cloudflare; Washington (District of Columbia); On-site; USD 185,000 - 254,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical/Rx Insurance

401(k) Retirement Savings Plan

Employee Stock Participation Plan

Flexible paid time off

Parental leave

Job summary

Cloudflare is seeking a Senior Systems Engineer to help build and operate the Linux-based edge appliance runtime and distributed control plane that connects customer sites to Cloudflare. You will work across hardware, virtual appliances, and public clouds to deliver scalable, secure, and observable systems.

This role emphasizes technical leadership, hands-on system design, and collaboration with Product, Security, and Solutions teams to drive customer value and robust production outcomes.

Qualifications

• 8+ years of professional software engineering experience building and operating complex production systems.
• Proficiency in Rust, Go, or TypeScript and willingness to work across the stack.
• Strong Linux systems and networking knowledge including IPsec/WireGuard/MASQUE.
• Experience designing distributed control planes and state management for large fleets.
• Security-focused with threat modeling and secure lifecycle design.
• Proven track record leading ambiguous initiatives from discovery to production.
• Excellent technical leadership and communication skills.

Responsibilities

• Build systems end to end: design and implement capabilities spanning cloud control plane, Linux appliance runtime, telemetry, and deployment environments.
• Build the Linux-based networking platform: develop and harden the dataplane; implement secure networking features.
• Engineer reliable fleet control: build distributed control-plane and state-management to deliver configurations; tolerate intermittent connectivity.
• Secure the device lifecycle: improve hardware-backed identity, attestation, secure boot, and OTA upgrades.
• Make operability a product feature: design telemetry, diagnostics, tests, support bundles, and remote operations.
• Drive customer-centered product decisions: work with customers and teams to translate requirements into direction.
• Own production outcomes: prototype quickly, ship safely, and own rollout and incident follow-up.
• Lead across teams: set architectural direction and mentor engineers across multiple Cloudflare teams.

Skills

8+ years experience

Rust/Go/TypeScript

Linux networking

Distributed systems

Security/attestation

AI-assisted tools

Leadership

Product judgment

Tools

Buildroot

Yocto

VMware/KVM

Kubernetes

OpenTelemetry

Prometheus

Job description

Cloudflare is seeking a Senior Systems Engineer to help build and operate the Linux-based edge appliance runtime and distributed control plane that connects customer sites to Cloudflare. You will work across hardware, virtual appliances, and public clouds to deliver scalable, secure, and observable systems.

This role emphasizes technical leadership, hands-on system design, and collaboration with Product, Security, and Solutions teams to drive customer value and robust production outcomes.