Senior Software Engineer, Distributed Databases

Senior Software Engineer, Distributed Databases In-Office Locations: Austin, TX | Hybrid About the Department Emerging Technologies & Induction (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. About the Team 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’ll be joining a highly motivated team that is building the next generation of Cloudflare’s distributed storage services. What You’ll Do In this role, you will own the distributed database systems that run across Cloudflare’s edge network and power services such as R2, Durable Objects, and Workers KV. We expect you to go a layer deeper than a database operator to fix the underlying problems. You will own your code from inception through production rollout. On any given day, you might: 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. Examples of 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 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 View email address on click.appcast.io or via mail at 101 Townsend St. San Francisco, CA 94107. #J-18808-Ljbffr CloudFlare