System Engineer

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. 

At Cloudflare, 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 | Austin, TX or Seattle, WA

About the Role

The Cloudflare Hyperdrive team builds the technology that makes regional databases feel like they are global. Hyperdrive is a core piece of the Cloudflare Developer Platform that accelerates database queries from Cloudflare Workers by pooling connections and caching data at the edge. By eliminating the massive latency overhead of TCP, TLS, and database-specific handshakes, Hyperdrive allows developers to use the databases they already know and love—like PostgreSQL and MySQL—without the "cold start" performance penalties typically associated with serverless environments.

Responsibilities

Hyperdrive is integrated directly into the Cloudflare global network and features:

• Global Connection Pooling: Maintains "warm" connections to origin databases across the globe, reducing connection times by up to 90%.
• Intelligent Query Caching: Automatically caches frequently run read queries as close to the user as possible.
• Protocol-Aware Proxying: Features custom-built implementations of database wire protocols (PostgreSQL and MySQL) to parse and optimize traffic in real-time.
• Seamless Integration: Works with existing ORMs and drivers, providing a simple connection string that "just works" for developers.
• The team is geographically distributed across North America.
• 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 write a design document that outlines how you plan to solve a specific problem, or fix a bug in how our user experience renders. You can expect to interact with a variety of languages and technologies including, but not limited to Rust, Go, C++, Typescript.

Desirable Skills, Knowledge, and Experience

• You have 4+ years of professional experience with Rust, Go, or C++. You understand how to write code that respects CPU and memory constraints.
• You are comfortable with the Linux networking stack. You know your way around TCP/IP, TLS, and WebSockets.
• You don’t just use databases; you understand how they work. You’re familiar with connection lifecycles, transaction states, and wire protocols.
• You enjoy the challenge of debugging complex, distributed systems and building for "five nines" reliability.

Bonus Points

• Experience with PgBouncer, ProxySQL, or custom database middleware.
• Familiarity with the Cloudflare Workers ecosystem and the unique stateful connection challenges of ephemeral computing.
• You’ve contributed to database drivers, ORMs, or low-level networking libraries.
• Experience using eBPF, perf, or other profiling tools to find and kill bottlenecks.

Compensation

Compensation may be adjusted depending on work location.

• For New York City, New Jersey, Washington, Washington DC, and California (excluding Bay Area) based hires: Estimated annual salary of $150,000 - $206,000

Equity

This role is eligible to participate in Cloudflare’s equity plan.

Benefits

Cloudflare 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 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.

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, 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!

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 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 hr@cloudflare.com or via mail at 101 Townsend St. San Francisco, CA 94107.