Principal Software Engineer, Storage & Databases

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. 

We realize people do not fit into neat boxes. We are looking for curious and empathetic individuals who are committed to developing themselves and learning new skills, and we are ready to help you do that. We cannot complete our mission without building a diverse and inclusive team. We hire the best people based on an evaluation of their potential and support them throughout their time at Cloudflare. Come join us! 

Locations: Austin, TX

About the Department

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. 

What you'll do

As a Principal Engineer focused on Cloudflare's storage and database products, you will shape the future of industry-leading services that redefine what is possible for developers. We don't just copy what other cloud providers do; we work backward from developer needs, reimagining solutions by leveraging our unique global network. This network brings data closer to users for unparalleled performance, allows for granular control to meet data residency requirements, and provides a platform for truly innovative data products.

You will be at the forefront of this innovation, architecting and building the next generation of serverless and edge data solutions. 

This includes:

• R2, our exabyte-scale object storage that revolutionizes the market by eliminating egress fees.


• Durable Objects, our unique implementation of the Actor model as a service, providing strongly consistent, stateful compute co-located with storage.


• Workers KV, our high-performance, low-latency global key-value store designed for high-read applications.


• Hyperdrive, a service that makes existing regional databases feel global by intelligently caching queries and managing connection pools from the edge.


• Cloudflare Queues, our global message queuing service with guaranteed delivery that enables reliable asynchronous processing.


• AI services that empower developers to build intelligent applications on the edge. This includes Vectorize, our globally distributed vector database for powering semantic search and Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG), and AutoRAG, a fully managed solution that automates the complex pipeline of ingesting data from R2, embedding it, and generating context-aware responses with Workers AI.


• Our evolving Data Platform, which adds value to every gigabyte stored on our infrastructure through services like Pipelines and Data Catalog.

You will own your code from inception to release, delivering solutions at all layers of the software stack to empower Cloudflare customers. On any given day, you might be architecting a new globally distributed data consistency model, optimizing storage engine performance, or designing a novel API for a new data-centric product. You can expect to interact with a variety of languages and technologies including, but not limited to JavaScript, Typescript, Rust, and C++.

Examples of desirable skills, knowledge and experience

• Minimum 8 years of experience working with distributed systems.


• Experience building and managing high volume software applications.


• Solid understanding of computer science fundamentals including data structures, algorithms, and object-oriented or functional design.


• Knowledge of at least one modern strongly-typed programming language: we primarily use Go, TypeScript, and Rust.


• Experience debugging, optimizing and identifying failure modes in a large-scale distributed system.

Bonus Points

• Experience building and managing a large scale data storage platform.


• Experience working in low-latency real time environments such as game streaming, game engine architecture, high frequency trading, payment systems


• Experience working in a non-garbage collected language such as Rust or C++.


• Experience writing Javascript and Typescript.


• Deep Linux / UNIX systems knowledge.

What Makes Cloudflare 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 Cloudflare’s enterprise customers--at no cost.

: 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, we've 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. Here’s the deal - we don’t 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 you’d like to be a part of? We’d love to hear from you!

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 View email address on jobs.jobcopilot.com or via mail at 101 Townsend St. San Francisco, CA 94107.