Systems Engineer, DNS

About Us

At Cloudflare we are on a mission to help build a better Internet. Today the company runs one of the worlds 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 Magazines Top Company Cultures list and ranked among the Worlds Most Innovative Companies by Fast Company.

At Cloudflare were not looking for people who wait for a polished roadmap; were 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 youre 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 youll fit right in.

Available Locations: Austin TX

About the DNS team

Cloudflare runs one of the largest DNS infrastructures in the world. We provide authoritative DNS for millions of Internet properties and operate 1.1.1.1 a public recursive resolver. Aggregated our authoritative DNS and resolver platforms handle around 3 trillion DNS queries per day.

Our DNS systems are custom built internally so weve developed a lot of proprietary technology that operates at scale iterating constantly to meet new scaling and reliability requirements. The work spans protocol implementation distributed systems performance reliability and the operational tooling behind them.

Our team builds and operates both services plus the systems that publish records distribute changes and serve queries across Cloudflares global network.

About the role

As a Systems Engineer on the DNS team at Cloudflare you will be a key contributor to one of the core systems that help build a better Internet. You will take ownership of medium-to-large projects driving them from initial design to successful completion with some supervision.

In this role you will act as a natural point of contact for your projects mentor junior engineers and help improve the resilience and architecture of our systems. We are looking for an engineer who can solve complex issues with minimal help and contribute to shaping features and processes within a talented collaborative team.

Responsibilities

• Maintain and expand our DNS infrastructure implementing features for our customers.
• Write high-quality maintainable and well-tested code that simplifies and improves our systems
• Act as a subject matter expert for moderately complex systems becoming a go-to person for questions about the projects you work on.
• Proactively identify issues affecting the team and propose effective solutions to improve our processes and technology.
• Collaborate with Product and other stakeholders to provide meaningful input on product requirement documents (PRDs).
• Serve as a mentor and onboarding guide for junior team members helping them grow through thoughtful code and design reviews.
• Debug and resolve complex service issues with minimal assistance improving system resilience through refactoring and re-architecting.

Desirable Skills Knowledge and Experience:

• BA/BS in Computer Science or a related field or equivalent practical experience.
• Strong systems programming fundamentals including performance concurrency and networking.
• Ability to write production code in Rust or Go or a track record of learning a comparable language quickly.
• A habit of measuring before optimizing and reasoning about failure modes.
• Willingness to own changes beyond the code: rollout monitoring on-call and follow-up.
• DNS experience is welcome not required.
• Ability to drive projects to completion and scope work effectively for yourself and other team members.

Bonus Points

• Experience running established team meetings or technical discussions.
• Contributions to technical documentation or talks that guide your team or organization.
• Experience interviewing and providing meaningful feedback on technical candidates.
• Familiarity with building services in a large-scale high-performance environment.
• Open source contributions is a big bonus
• Knowledge of DNSSEC and various security extensions to DNS
• Knowledge of TLS and CDN Networks

What Makes Cloudflare Special

Were not just a highly ambitious large-scale technology company. Were 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 weve equipped more than 2400 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 Cloudflares 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 weve provided services to more than 425 local government election websites in 33 states.

1.1.1.1 : We released 1.1.1.1 to help fix the foundation of the Internet by building a faster more secure and privacy-centric public DNS resolver. This is available publicly for everyone to use - it is the first consumer-focused service Cloudflare has ever released. Heres the deal - we dont store client IP addresses never ever. We will continue to abide by our privacy commitment and ensure that no user data is sold to advertisers or used to target consumers.

Sound like something youd like to be a part of Wed love to hear from you!

Please note that applicants who progress to the offer stage of the interview process may be asked to attend an in-person interview within one of the Cloudflare Offices or Cloudflare Hubs. More details about this will be available at that stage of the interview process.

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 persons 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 or via mail at 101 Townsend St. San Francisco CA 94107.

Required Experience:

IC