Staff Network Infrastructure Architect, Global Scale

Cloudflare; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 170,000 - 260,000; Full time

Job summary

Cloudflare is seeking a Staff Engineer to lead the design, evolution, and operational excellence of our global network infrastructure. You will own foundational decisions on how the network grows, from capacity planning to architectural standards, guiding multiple teams across the organization.

You will mentor engineers, shape multi-year roadmaps, and partner with product, operations, and procurement to deliver reliable, scalable, and secure Internet infrastructure at internet scale.

Qualifications

• 10+ years designing, operating, or planning large-scale network infrastructure at hyperscale (or equivalent)
• Proven track record building greenfield network architectures and evolving them as business needs change
• Deep, hands-on expertise with modern routing protocols (BGP, ISIS, RSVP-TE, QoS, traffic engineering)
• Strong experience with software-defined networking, overlay networks, and programmable forwarding
• Expert-level understanding of network economics: cost drivers, capacity planning, peering strategy, and trade-offs between performance, redundancy, and capital efficiency
• Track record automating complex network operations and building extensible frameworks that scale across large teams
• Experience designing and implementing DDoS mitigation strategies, firewall policies, and network security at scale
• Ability to design intent-based systems that reduce operational complexity while maintaining flexibility
• Strong systems-level understanding across the full stack: from hardware platforms and protocols through software-defined networking to application-level routing decisions
• Experience leading network design, planning, budgeting, and sourcing decisions for large deployments
• Ability to think 3–5 years ahead while shipping solutions today
• Proven ability to influence without direct authority; comfortable presenting technical recommendations to senior leadership and non-technical stakeholders
• Strong writing and documentation skills; able to articulate complex technical decisions and trade-offs clearly
• Experience mentoring junior engineers or leading teams through major architectural transitions
• Comfortable working in a matrix environment with multiple stakeholders (product, operations, procurement, finance) and driving alignment

Responsibilities

• Design and evolve the architecture of Cloudflare's global network, including core infrastructure patterns, interconnection strategies, and edge deployment models
• Establish and maintain design standards that enable consistency, reliability, and defensibility across heterogeneous deployments
• Lead architectural reviews; anticipate technical debt and recommend major evolution initiatives, working across team
• Own the design and continuous improvement of capacity management processes and systems used across infrastructure teams
• Develop methodologies for forecasting demand, modeling growth scenarios, and optimizing resource utilization
• Build tools, dashboards, and automated systems that make capacity planning visible, transparent, and actionable
• Drive the evolution of network hardware and platform strategies, evaluating new platforms, vendors, and architectures
• Lead technical evaluations of emerging technologies (silicon, switching architectures, routing protocols, optical transport, etc.)
• Work with procurement, supply chain, and engineering teams to transition the network to next-generation platforms
• Conceive and plan multi-year technical roadmaps for network infrastructure, anticipating growth patterns and industry dynamics

Skills

Hyperscale networking

Greenfield architectures

Routing protocols

Software-defined networking

Network economics

Automation

Network security at scale

Intent-based systems

Systems thinking

Mentoring engineers

Stakeholder management

Tools

SDN platforms

Network telemetry

Netflow analysis

Observability at scale

Automation frameworks

Job description

Cloudflare is seeking a Staff Engineer to lead the design, evolution, and operational excellence of our global network infrastructure. You will own foundational decisions on how the network grows, from capacity planning to architectural standards, guiding multiple teams across the organization.

You will mentor engineers, shape multi-year roadmaps, and partner with product, operations, and procurement to deliver reliable, scalable, and secure Internet infrastructure at internet scale.