Senior Customer Engineer- (AI & Start-Ups). San Francisco only.
CloudflareRole Description & Requirements
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
- San Francisco, US
- We are only considering locally based candidates
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Senior Customer Engineer - (AI & Start-Ups)
About the Role
Digital Native SEs at Cloudflare work with the most innovative and cutting-edge companies on the planet — the startups and high-growth, cloud-native businesses that are building the next generation of Internet products. These are companies where the developers are the decision makers, and where the CTO is often personally responsible for shipping new products and getting the company's AI initiatives off the ground.
This role is for a technologist who genuinely enjoys being in the room with builders. You'll be equally comfortable jumping into a Slack channel with a founding engineer, whiteboarding an architecture with a lead developer, and stepping into a strategic conversation with a CTO about their platform and AI roadmap. You speak the language of engineers fluently and can hold a credible, detailed technical conversation — but this is not a software developer role, and you won't be writing production code every day. Your superpower is technical discovery, translation, and evangelism: understanding what a builder is trying to accomplish, mapping it to the full breadth of the Cloudflare Developer Platform, and inspiring teams to build on Cloudflare rather than just consume a single service.
The Digital Native segment leans heavily on Solutions Engineering to lead technical discovery within the cloud-developer vertical. You'll be expected to go deep on the Cloudflare Developer Platform — Workers, Durable Objects, Workers AI, R2, KV, D1, Vectorize, Queues, Pages, and the broader developer ecosystem — far beyond basic storage, and to make the case for Cloudflare as the place to build. This role covers both the acquisition of new Digital Native accounts and the expansion of existing ones. The ideal candidate is a "builder" personality with a strong mix of pre-sales/technical customer-facing experience who thrives in an agile, fast-moving environment.
What you'll do as a Senior Solutions Engineer
The Pre-Sales Solution Engineering organization owns the technical sales of the Cloudflare solution portfolio, ensuring maximal business value, fit-for-purpose solution design and adoption roadmap for our customers. Solution Engineering is made up of individuals from a wide range of backgrounds including but not limited to Sales Consultants, Technical Consultants, Technical Support and Program Managers.
You are a customer-facing technologist within the Cloudflare Solutions Engineering team, focused on the developer-first, digital-native segment. You have experience in a pre-sales or other technical customer-facing role, and you're at your best when engaging directly with engineering teams and technical founders. In this role you'll partner closely with the sales team from the very start of the cycle — joining early discovery calls, qualifying opportunities from the get-go, and embedding yourself in customer Slack channels and working sessions. You'll lead technical discovery, deliver compelling demos and architecture discussions, run proof-of-concept builds, and evangelize the Cloudflare Developer Platform as the foundation for our customers' next products and AI initiatives.
Responsibilities
Specifically, we are looking for you to:
- Lead technical discovery within the cloud-developer vertical — asking the right questions to uncover how a customer builds, what they're trying to ship, and where Cloudflare fits.
- Engage early and often: join sales-led discovery calls from the outset, help qualify deals from the get-go, and stay embedded with customer teams (including in their Slack channels and working sessions) throughout the cycle.
- Identify and map customer initiatives and business problems — especially around new product development and AI initiatives — to the Cloudflare platform.
- Build relationships and technical champions within customer accounts, from founding engineers and developers up to the CTO.
- Develop and present tailored technical content and demos for both hands-on developer audiences and senior technical leadership.
- Lead demo and proof-of-concept / build activities for Cloudflare prospects and customers.
- Evangelize the Cloudflare Developer Platform (Workers, Workers AI, Durable Objects, R2, D1, KV, Vectorize, Queues, Pages and more) — making the case for customers to build on Cloudflare, not just use it for storage or CDN.
- Demonstrate your expertise with your peers through the creation of professional content, including reference architectures, demos, blog posts and other knowledge-sharing activities.
- Represent and evangelize Cloudflare externally at Developer, Community, Technology and Industry events with thought leadership and expertise.
- Apply in-depth vertical knowledge or domain expertise. Advise on best practices.
- Previous experience as a Solutions Engineer or other customer-facing technical role, ideally selling to or working with developer-led, cloud-native, or startup organizations.
- A genuine "builder" mindset and the personality to match: you enjoy talking to developers, you're curious, and you naturally gravitate toward technical problem-solving conversations.
- The ability to speak engineers' language credibly — you can hold your own on architecture, APIs, and platform design — without this being a hands-on, code-every-day developer role.
- Strong technical discovery instincts: you know how to draw out requirements, qualify fit early, and separate real needs from noise.
- A good mix of pre-sales / technical sales experience and comfort operating in an agile, fast-moving environment (joining Slack channels, iterating quickly, engaging in early-stage calls, and qualifying deals from the start).
- Solid communication, written and presentation skills, with the range to talk to both a hands-on developer and a CTO in the same day.
- Ability to work on several projects and activities concurrently.
- Highly driven, curious, team-oriented, and able to work with a sense of urgency.
- You've built web applications before, or contributed to existing web applications in a meaningful way — enough to have real empathy for how developers work.
- Polished communication and executive presentation skills with the ability to drive a discussion with a broad range of stakeholders (from the web developer to the CTO/CISO).
- Relationship building: a proven track record of building deep technical relationships with engineers and technical founders. Experience managing various stakeholder relationships to build consensus on technical solutions/projects.
- Experience managing technical sales within accounts, including developing champion-style relationships, driving technical wins, and assisting with technical validation.
- Bachelor's Degree or equivalent in relevant work experience.
- The role requires up to 50% travel to attend meetings with prospects or customers, attend conferences and other industry events, and to collaborate with your Cloudflare teammates.
- The Cloudflare Developer Platform — serverless compute and application development with Workers, Durable Objects, Workers AI, R2, KV, D1, Vectorize, Queues, and Pages. Familiarity with building or architecting applications on a serverless/edge platform is a strong plus.
- AI/GenAI application patterns — inference at the edge, RAG, vector databases, and how startups are operationalizing AI initiatives.
- HTTP technologies including reverse proxy (e.g., WAF and CDN), forward proxy (secure web gateway), and serverless application development.
- Internet security technologies including DDoS and DDoS mitigation, Firewalls, TLS, VPN, DLP.
- Networking technologies including TCP, UDP, DNS, IPv4 + IPv6, BGP routing, GRE, SD-WAN, MPLS, Global Traffic Management.
- Zero-trust network access (ZTNA & SASE) concepts including identity management and authentication.
- Cloud computing technologies such as AWS, GCP, Azure and others.
- Some scripting or programming familiarity with one or more of JavaScript/TypeScript, Python, Golang, BASH — enough to read code, build a demo, and converse with engineers (not to ship production software).
- Understanding of, or experience with, regulatory requirements such as FedRAMP, GDPR, PCI DSS, HIPAA, SOC-2, ISO/IEC.
- An undergraduate degree in Computer Science, Engineering or a related field. Reminder: this is not a strict requirement at all. Candidates from all walks of life are welcome.
- You can translate technical concepts and jargon for a wide variety of audiences: from systems engineers, to front-end developers, through to technical founders and C-levels.
- You want to be constantly learning new things and teaching what you've learned to the broader team through internal and external blog posts, team demos, and product training sessions.
- You have a knack for understanding problems and finding creative ways to solve them. Our product suite is ever-growing, and knowing how to identify which parts will solve a customer's particular problem is important.
- You understand how to manage a project, work to deadlines, and prioritize between competing demands.
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Compensation
Compensation may be adjusted depending on work location.
- For San Francisco based hires: Estimated annual salary of $231,000-$275,000+ OTE, Base + Commissions
- Los Angeles based hires: Estimated annual salary of $221,000 - $267,000 OTE, Base + Commissions.
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.
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