Senior Software Engineer, Security Rules

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: London (UK), Lisbon (Portugal)

About the role

Cloudflare’s Engineers build and operate the software that helps power 25+ million Internet properties and millions of businesses around the world. Across our engineering organizations, we have opportunities for high caliber, curious and empathetic people to take on big challenges and build some of the best skills in the industry.

We’re looking for talented team members to help build high-growth products, help scale our expanding network, build tools to improve availability, performance, uptime, and response times, and make systems failure-resistant and ready-to-scale.

We are looking for a talented Systems Engineer to join the Security Rules team. You will work on a range of microservices written mainly in Rust. Technologies we use include Docker, Go, PostgreSQL, Redis, Memcached, gRPC, Kafka, Clickhouse and the usual Unix/Linux tools and workflows.

We strive to build reliable, fault-tolerant systems that can operate at Cloudflare’s scale. You will join a team of bright, hard-working, and supportive engineers who are passionate about their craft, and you will be comfortable operating in a fast-paced but sane work environment.

As a senior engineer, you will take ownership of complex technical problems, lead projects from design through production operation, and help shape the architecture and reliability of systems that run at Cloudflare’s scale.

You will also mentor other engineers, provide thoughtful technical guidance, and help raise the quality of engineering practices across the team. You will join a group of hard-working, and supportive engineers who care deeply about their craft and value a fast-paced but sane work environment.

This role may require flexibility to be on-call outside of standard working hours to address technical issues as needed.

What you'll do

Design, implement, and maintain the software systems that comprise Cloudflare’s Application Security Product Offering such as Rate Limiting, Web Application Firewall and more

Lead technical design and execution for complex projects, helping define architecture, tradeoffs, milestones, and delivery plans.

Collaborate with internal teams, including security, network engineering, SRE, and product management, to design scalable solutions to difficult technical problems.

Help raise the technical bar for the team by identifying systemic improvements, reducing operational toil, and influencing long-term engineering direction.

Review work from your peers throughout all stages of the development lifecycle to ensure high-quality, maintainable code.

Mentor engineers across the team by sharing technical context, providing thoughtful code and design feedback, and helping others grow in scope and ownership.

Work with a wide range of technologies and programming languages, including Rust, Go, as well as various databases (SQL and No-SQL), Docker, and Kubernetes.

Desirable Skills, Knowledge, and Experience

6+ years of relevant professional experience with a technology company

Strong programming skills in Rust, Go, C++, or a similar systems-level language

Demonstrated ability to lead complex technical projects from ambiguity through delivery

Experience building and operating distributed systems

Strong interpersonal and communication skills, demonstrating empathy, teamwork and a sense of ownership.

Experience mentoring engineers, reviewing technical designs and providing high-quality code review.

Experience with monitoring, alerting and debugging high volume production systems

Experience with databases (we use PostgreSQL, Clickhouse and Memcached)

Bonus Points

Experience influencing technical direction across a team or product area

Experience improving engineering practices, operational processes, or reliability for production services

Experience with modern Unix/Linux development and runtime environments

Experience with monitoring and logging tools like Prometheus and Grafana

Experience with containerization and orchestration technologies, such as Docker and Kubernetes

Compensation

For Portugal based hires: Estimated annual salary is between €66,000 - €91,000.

The final offer will be inclusive of time exemption, in alignment with the applicable law and collective bargaining agreements.

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.