Senior Network Engineer

CloudFlare; Atlanta (GA); On-site; USD 140,000 - 220,000; Full time

Job summary

Cloudflare operates one of the world's largest, interconnected networks, seeking a Senior Network Engineer to join our Edge Network & Backbone team. You will bring deep operational experience, mentor peers, and help shape AI-powered tooling that reduces toil and accelerates troubleshooting.

In this role, you will own network operations, diagnose complex faults, and drive improvements across latency, routing, and scale while collaborating with global teams to keep our network running around the

Qualifications

• Proven track record in large-scale network engineering and operations.
• Proficiency in Python and/or TypeScript and/or Go.
• Experience with agent integration patterns.
• Knowledge of BGP and anycast routing.
• Familiarity with MPLS and Segment Routing.
• Experience with network automation frameworks such as SaltStack or Ansible.
• Strong communication and leadership under pressure.
• Ability to mentor junior engineers and elevate team performance.

Responsibilities

• Own the technical operation, engineering, and architecture of Cloudflare's global network across edge and backbone.
• Diagnose and resolve complex network faults, manage incident response incl. on-call, and contribute to post-incident reviews.
• Build production AI agents for network operations with LLM-powered tooling and observability.
• Apply AI to accelerate troubleshooting using internal AI platforms to speed root cause analysis.
• Architect improvements to lower latency, reduce packet loss, and scale globally.
• Mentor junior engineers, set standards, and drive a culture of operational excellence.
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams on design docs, SOPs, and knowledge bases.

Skills

Large-scale networking

Python/TypeScript/Go

Agent integration

Fault tolerance

BGP/Anycast

MPLS/Segment Routing

SaltStack/Ansible

Pressure management

Communication skills

Tools

SaltStack

Ansible

Job description

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

• Austin, US
• Atlanta
• Seattle

About the Role

Cloudflare operates one of the world's largest and most interconnected networks, spanning 335+ cities across every region of the globe. We are looking for a Senior Network Engineer to join our Edge Network & Backbone team — someone who brings deep operational experience, an AI-first mindset, and the instinct to mentor and lift the engineers around them. In your first year, this role is deliberately hands‑on: you'll be in the operational trenches, owning complex faults, driving capacity work, and setting the standard for how we run the network. Beyond that, you'll help shape how the team works — building AI-enabled tooling and agents that reduce toil, accelerate troubleshooting, and make the whole team more effective. This is a North American based role, but you’ll be joining one global team: the sun never sets on Cloudflare, and our engineers hand off work across every time zone to keep the network running around the clock.

Responsibilities

• Own the technical operation, engineering, and architecture of Cloudflare's global network, including planning, installation, and day‑to‑day management of hardware and software across the edge and backbone.
• Serve as a hands‑on operational anchor for the team — diagnosing and resolving complex network faults, owning incident response end‑to‑end including on‑call rotation, and contributing to post‑incident reviews to drive continuous improvement.
• Build production AI agents for network operations. Design, ship, and own LLM‑powered tools that integrate with our operational systems of record via tool calling. Ship them with evals, observability of agent decisions, cost tracking, and human‑in‑the‑loop checkpoints where autonomous action carries blast radius.
• Apply AI to accelerate troubleshooting. Use and extend our internal AI platform (Workers AI, AI Gateway) to speed up root cause analysis, pattern recognition across faults, and operational decision‑making under pressure.
• Architect network improvements that lower latency, reduce packet loss, and increase scale — optimising end user experience across Cloudflare's global infrastructure.
• Mentor and develop junior engineers on the team, setting technical standards, conducting structured troubleshooting sessions, and building a culture of operational excellence and continuous learning.
• Collaborate with internal teams on cross‑functional network projects, contributing to design documentation, SOPs, and knowledge base articles that outlast any individual contributor.

Desirable Skills, Knowledge, and Experience

• Proven track record in large‑scale network engineering and operations.
• Proficiency in Python and/or TypeScript and/or Go sufficient to build, debug, and maintain agent code, not just to glue scripts together.
• Working knowledge of agent integration patterns: function/tool calling, MCP or equivalent, retrieval over operational corpora (runbooks, postmortems, change history), and prompt iteration with evals.
• Experience reasoning about agent failure modes in production: hallucination guards, fallback paths, rollback, blast‑radius control.
• Deep expertise in BGP and anycast routing, with the ability to diagnose and resolve complex routing issues in a production environment.
• Strong understanding of MPLS and Segment Routing.
• Experience with network automation frameworks such as SaltStack, Ansible, or equivalent, and a strong instinct for solving operational problems through code.
• Ability to prioritise effectively and lead calmly when faced with high‑pressure scenarios.
• An effective communicator who can adapt their style to any audience — whether guiding a junior engineer through a fault or presenting a network architecture decision to senior leadership.

Bonus Points

• Shipped LLM‑powered tooling into production use by a team other than your own, with measurable operational impact.
• Professional‑level network certification (JNCIP, CCNP, or equivalent or higher).
• Experience with optical transport technologies such as CWDM and DWDM.
• Experience writing network configuration and design documentation at an architectural level.

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.

Cloudflare provides reasonable accommodations to qualified individuals with disabilities. If you require a reasonable accommodation to apply for a job, please contact us at [e-mail] or by mail at 101 Townsend St. San Francisco, CA 94107.

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.