Senior Software Engineer, Distributed Databases

Cloudflare; Austin (TX); On-site; USD 185,000 - 254,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical Insurance

Dental Insurance

Vision Insurance

401(k) Retirement Savings Plan

Employee Stock Participation Plan

Flexible paid time off

Job summary

Cloudflare’s ETI Storage Infrastructure team builds the core storage layer supporting distributed services across Cloudflare’s edge network. You will help manage distributed databases and storage systems, optimize rebuilds, and ensure durability at scale.

The role emphasizes correctness, performance, and collaboration across teams, with exposure to Go, Rust, Saltstack, and Terraform, shaping high‑throughput, low‑latency storage for millions of customers.

Qualifications

• Experience with distributed databases or storage systems.
• Strong programming skills in Go, Rust, C++, or similar.
• Deep understanding of distributed systems: consensus, replication, MVCC, isolation.
• Experience reading and debugging complex codebases with correctness in mind.
• Familiarity with storage engines like RocksDB, LevelDB, Pebble.
• Experience with infrastructure as code and monitoring tools.

Responsibilities

• Add features and extensions to the database for R2, Durable Objects, and Workers KV.
• Ensure correctness through code reviews, testing, and staged rollout.
• Tune performance and resource usage during rollouts and production.
• Optimize data placement and replication for edge topology with schema design input.
• Build observability and tooling for the database across consumers.
• Collaborate with teams using Go, Rust, Saltstack, and Terraform.

Skills

Go

Rust

C++

Distributed systems

SQL databases

Networking basics

Infrastructure as code

Monitoring Grafana

Tools

Saltstack

Terraform

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.

Locations

Available Locations: Austin, TX or Seattle, WA

About The Role

Emerging Technologies & Incubation (ETI) is where new and bold products are built and released within Cloudflare. Rather than being constrained by the structures which make Cloudflare a massively successful business, we are able to leverage them to deliver entirely new tools and products to our customers. Cloudflare’s edge and network make it possible to solve problems at massive scale and efficiency which would be impossible for almost any other organization. ETI's Storage Infrastructure team is responsible for the core storage layer that underpins many of ETI's stateful services. Our scope ranges from managing the physical hardware to operating the distributed databases and storage systems built upon it. We run this infrastructure globally across Cloudflare's network, which presents unique and complex engineering puzzles. We navigate efficiently expanding storage capacity, optimizing rebuild operations, and coordinating operations across failure domains to uphold durability. While other service teams focus on product development, our mission is to ensure the underlying storage is reliable, fast, and scalable. You will be joining a highly motivated team that is building the next generation of Cloudflare’s distributed storage services.

Responsibilities

• Add new features and extensions to the database to meet the needs of R2, Durable Objects, and Workers KV.
• Hold the bar on correctness through code review, testing, and staged rollout so defects are caught before customer impact.
• Tune performance and resource utilization across staged rollouts and production.
• Optimize data placement and replication for our edge topology, and partner with service teams on schema design and query performance.
• Build the observability and tooling that make the database supportable across its consumers.
• You can expect to interact with a variety of languages and technologies including Go, Rust, Saltstack, and Terraform.

Desirable Skills, Knowledge, And Experience

• Source‑code level experience contributing to a distributed database or distributed storage system. Examples include distributed SQL databases (CockroachDB, TiDB / TiKV, YugabyteDB, Spanner), Raft‑based or Paxos‑based storage systems (etcd, FoundationDB), wide‑column stores (Cassandra, ScyllaDB), document databases (MongoDB), or comparable systems.
• Strong programming skills in Go, Rust, C++, or another systems language, with a willingness to be productive in Go for this role.
• Deep understanding of distributed systems concepts: consensus protocols (Raft or Paxos), data replication, MVCC, transaction isolation levels, fault tolerance, and partition tolerance.
• Experience reading, debugging, and modifying complex codebases under correctness constraints (concurrency, durability, consistency).
• Familiarity with LSM‑tree storage engines (RocksDB, LevelDB, Pebble, SlateDB) or comparable storage internals.
• Familiarity with storage fundamentals: block devices, filesystems, SSD characteristics.
• Experience building and maintaining high‑throughput, low‑latency systems.
• Understanding of network fundamentals as they relate to distributed storage: bandwidth constraints, latency tradeoffs, cross‑datacenter replication.
• Experience with infrastructure configuration tooling and infrastructure as code.
• Experience with monitoring tools (Prometheus, Grafana) and analytics tools (Clickhouse) for operating production database systems.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills and ability to explain technical decisions clearly.
• Comfortable operating in fast‑paced environments with tight deadlines and evolving priorities.

Compensation

Compensation may be adjusted depending on work location.

• For New York City, New Jersey, Washington, Washington DC, and California (excluding Bay Area) based hires: Estimated annual salary of $185,000 - $254,000

This role is eligible to participate in Cloudflare’s equity plan.

Benefits

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

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.

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. 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.