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.
Principal Solutions Engineer.
Available Locations
Responsibilities
- As a Solutions Engineer, you will serve as the advanced technical lynchpin through the entire sales cycle, orchestrating complex enterprise-grade engagements across both pre- and post-sales phases. You will act as an authoritative trusted advisor and technical customer advocate within Cloudflare, working closely with Account Executives, Product Management, Engineering, and Customer Success. Your mission is to find best-fit architectures for high-value prospects, guide major enterprises to their "time to first value," and design custom validation approaches for unvalidated complex scenarios. You will work closely with our Enterprise prospects and customers to educate, empower, and ensure their success on the Cloudflare platform.
- Technical Validation & Custom Architecture: Define technical success criteria collaboratively with customers and align technical validation activities directly to customer outcomes.
- Technical Strategic Ownership: You will take lead on the technical partnership with your accounts, maintaining deep proficiency in Cloudflare’s portfolio to effectively communicate our strategic value within high-complexity enterprise initiatives.
- Business Generation & Expansion: Run thorough technical discovery and qualification of prospect and customer use cases using solution selling methodologies (e.g., MEDDPICC and BANT). Lead tailored product demonstrations and proofs-of-concept (PoCs) to secure the technical win.
- Enterprise Account Planning & Deal Execution: Actively participate in account planning, stakeholder mapping, and multi-product roadmap development to expand footprint and drive upsell velocity in enterprise accounts. Maintain a strong presence in opportunity reviews and pipeline management (Salesforce).
- Customer Advisory & Strategic Guidance: Partner with existing clients as a dedicated account advisor, providing technical best practices on the implementation of Cloudflare products and strategic guidance on internet security, performance, and future-proofing architectures.
- Cross-Functional & Ecosystem Collaboration: Develop deep relationships across Sales, Product, Engineering, and Support to coordinate feature requests/escalations and deliver robust ecosystem integrations. Collaborate actively with external channel and alliance partners to expand territory footprint.
- Thought Leadership & Mentorship: Contribute to a high-performance team culture. Share internal content, deliver specialized internal demos, author training material or blog posts, and mentor fellow engineering team members.
- Travel: Willingness to travel 25-50% travel to align face-to-face with high-growth accounts, enterprise prospects, and regional teams.
Desirable Skills, Knowledge, and Experience
- Our Principal Solutions Engineers come from a wide range of backgrounds: financial consulting, engineering, software development, product management, customer support, and project delivery. We're serious about building a diverse team. When hiring, we look for diversity of experience combined with genuine curiosity for our technology, the adoption of new industry solutions, and an aptitude for leveraging AI-powered tools.
- Ultimately, you are passionate about technology and have the ability to explain complex technical concepts in easy-to-understand terms to a wide range of audiences—from systems engineers to C-level executives. You are naturally curious, and an avid builder who is not afraid to get your hands dirty. You appreciate the diversity of challenges in working with customers and look forward to helping them realize the full promise of Cloudflare and its ecosystem. On the Solutions Engineering team, you will find a collaborative environment where everyone brings different strengths and jumps in to help each other.
- Professional Experience & Sales Methodology: Minimum 3+ years of experience in a customer-facing sales engineering, consulting, or systems engineering role within enterprise segments. Knowledge in executing MEDDPICC validation and BANT qualifications.
- Expertise in Internet Technologies: Production-grade expertise across all layers of the OSI Model, explicitly covering BGP routing protocols, GRE tunneling, TCP/UDP transport mechanics, authoritative and recursive DNS structures, HTTP(S) delivery, and SSL/TLS cryptographic handshakes.
- Solutions & Network Architecture: Deep technical knowledge of cloud security and performance portfolios. Proven experience with multi-cloud/hybrid environments (AWS, GCP, Azure), reverse-proxy topologies, SASE/SSE frameworks, Zero-Trust network access (ZTNA), secure web gateways (SWG), CASB, DLP, and L3/L4/L7 DDoS mitigation architectures.
- Programmability & Scripting: Demonstrated proficiency with a scripting or programming language (e.g., Python, JavaScript, Bash, Lua, Go) to build custom edge logic, utilize RESTful APIs, or manage Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC) via tools like the Cloudflare Terraform provider.
- Executive Presence & Relationship Building: Polished communication and high emotional intelligence (EQ) with a proven track record of building long-term, trusted-advisor relationships from front-end developers up to senior C-level executives (CIOs, CISOs, CTOs).
- Project Management & Execution: Strong ownership to manage projects, meet deadlines, prioritize competing demands, and focus on both quality and execution efficiency.
- Artificial Intelligence: Proficient in adoption and utilization of AI tools to leverage and expand role capabilities.
- Hands-on Building: You've built full-stack web applications before, manipulated databases, or experimented with emerging generative AI security architectures.
Bonus Points
- Advanced certifications in networking, cloud architectures, or information security (e.g., Cloudflare certifications, CISSP, AWS/GCP Solutions Architect).
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.