Senior Software Engineer - Kubernetes platform

Cloudflare, Inc.; United States; Hybrid; USD 185,000 - 254,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health Insurance

401(k) Retirement Savings Plan

Employee Stock Participation Plan

Flexible PTO

Job summary

Cloudflare, Inc. seeks a Senior Kubernetes Platform Engineer to design and operate scalable, secure Kubernetes platforms. You will work with cross‑functional teams to deploy and manage services that power the company’s global network.

The role blends software engineering and DevOps responsibilities, emphasizing reliability and performance across regions. Ideal candidates have production Kubernetes experience, strong Linux debugging skills, and a solid grasp of networking.

Qualifications

• Experience managing production Kubernetes clusters.
• Extensive Linux systems experience at scale.
• Strong debugging and incident response skills.
• Knowledge of container runtimes and Linux isolation.
• Firm grasp of IP networking and firewall rules (iptables/nftables).
• Proficiency with Go, TypeScript, and Bash.
• Ability to break down complex problems and drive consensus.

Responsibilities

• Design scalable, resilient systems that can keep up with company growth.
• Collaborate with application teams to optimize architectures in Kubernetes.
• Harden the platform against security threats and noisy neighbours.
• Improve resource efficiency across CPU, memory, bandwidth, storage.
• Respond to, resolve, and prevent platform incidents.
• Contribute to open source projects such as Envoy, Contour, etcd, etc.

Skills

Kubernetes administration

Linux debugging

IP networking

Go/TS/Bash basics

Incident response

Education

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or related field

Tools

Envoy

Contour

etcd

Ceph

Rook

KubeVirt

Prometheus

Elasticsearch/Kibana

CNIs

ArgoCD

Argo Rollouts

Job description

About Us

At the company, 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. the company protects and accelerates any Internet application online without adding hardware, installing software, or changing a line of code. Internet properties powered by the company 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. the company was named to Entrepreneur Magazine’s Top Company Cultures list and ranked among the World’s Most Innovative Companies by Fast Company.

At the company, 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

• Atlanta, US

• Austin, US

• Denver, US

• New York, US

• San Francisco, US

• Seattle, US

• Washington DC, US

• Canada

About the role

Many of the company’s critical internal services run on Kubernetes. These services include those responsible for the company’s control plane and APIs, data analytics and other internal tools used to manage our global network. These Kubernetes platforms are purpose-built from the ground up and run on bare metal Linux in different regions around the world. The scale we work at involves tens of thousands of containers and terabits per second of network traffic. The team takes pride in knowing this platform helps run parts of the global Internet.

As an engineer on the Kubernetes platform team, you'll be building the tools to help engineers deploy and operate the services that make the company work. Our mission is to provide a reliable and flexible platform to help product teams release new software efficiently and safely. The role includes both software engineering and DevOps operational responsibilities.

Responsibilities

• Design scalable and resilient systems that can keep up with company growth.

• Work with application teams to understand their needs and challenges, and help them choose the best way to architect their systems to run well in our Kubernetes environment.

• Harden the platform against security threats, noisy neighbours, and accidents.

• Improve the efficiency of our use of resources such as CPU, memory, bandwidth, and storage.

• Help respond to, resolve, and prevent incidents impacting the platform or our users.

• Contribute back to the open source community. Some of our favorite open source projects include: Envoy, Contour, Consul, etcd, cdk8s, Cloudprober, Calico, Ceph, Rook, KubeVirt, and more.

Desirable Skills, Knowledge, and Experience

• Experience managing production Kubernetes clusters.

• Experience operating systems on-premise at scale in roles such as SRE, systems design or architecture.

• Excellent debugging skills in a Linux environment.

• Knowledge of how container runtimes work inside of Linux (isolation, storage, and networking).

• A firm grasp of IP networking including routing and iptables/nftables.

• Ability to work with codebases in Go, TypeScript, and Bash/shell.

• The ability to break down complex problems into smaller pieces, provide options, talk through trade-offs, build consensus, and drive the effort to solve the problem.

Bonus Points

• Familiarity with building platforms across multiple zones and regions as the foundation for other teams to build distributed highly-available applications.

• Experience with configuration management frameworks such as SaltStack or Ansible.

• Experience with continuous deployment tooling like ArgoCD and Argo Rollouts.

• Operational/administrator experience with etcd, Ceph, Rook, KubeVirt, CNIs, ClusterAPI, Envoy, and/or Contour.

• Experience as a user of Prometheus, Elasticsearch/Kibana, Vault, Redis, and/or Consul.

Compensation

Compensation may be adjusted depending on work location.

• For California based hires: Estimated annual salary of $194,000 - $266,000

• For Colorado based hires: Estimated annual salary of $168,000 - $231,000

• For New York based hires: Estimated annual salary of $185,000 - $254,000

• For Washington based hires: Estimated annual salary of $185,000 - $254,000

• For Washington DC based hires: Estimated annual salary of $185,000 - $254,000

• For Canada based hires: Estimated annual salary of $150,000 - $206,000

Applications will be accepted until December 25, 2026.

Equity

This role is eligible to participate in the company's equity plan.

Benefits

the company 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 the company 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 the company’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,