Distributed Systems Engineer - Data Platform - Analytics and Alerts in London

Locations Available: London (UK), Lisbon (Portugal), or Austin (US)

About Us

At Cloudflare, we are on a mission to help build a better Internet. Today the company runs one of the worlds 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.

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!

About Role

We are looking for experienced and highly motivated engineers to join our DATA Org and help build the future of data at Cloudflare. Our organisation is responsible for the entire data lifecycle – from ingestion and processing to storage and retrieval – powering the critical logs and analytics that provide our customers with real‐time visibility into the health and performance of their online properties.

Our mission is to empower customers to leverage their data to drive better outcomes for their business. We build and maintain a suite of high‐performance, scalable systems that handle more than a billion events in a second. As an engineer in our organisation, you will have the opportunity to work on complex distributed systems challenges across different parts of our data stack.

Our Data Organisation is strategically composed of several key teams, each focusing on a distinct aspect of our comprehensive data platform:

• Data Delivery / Data Pipeline: This team designs, develops, and operates our distributed data delivery pipeline – a high‐throughput, low‐latency system written in Go that ingests, processes, and routes massive volumes of data from Cloudflare's global network to multiple core destinations.
• Analytical Database Platform: Engineers on this team contribute to and evolve our core analytical platform powered by ClickHouse, building a high‐performance, scalable database optimized for massive analytical workloads.
• Data Retrieval (Customer‐Facing Products): Analytics and Alerts: Members develop public APIs such as the GraphQL Analytics API and an alerting platform that enables users to configure near real‐time alerts on critical logs and metrics.
• Logs and Audit Logs: This specialized team builds a robust logging platform that delivers reliable data, seamless integrations, and secure, efficient storage of audit logs for customers.

Responsibilities

• Develop and enhance our customer‐facing APIs, focusing on performance, reliability, and intuitive user experience.
• Design, build, and maintain our near real‐time alerting platform, from data processing and anomaly detection to reliable notification delivery.
• Optimize the performance of complex analytical queries that power our APIs and dashboards, working closely with the database platform team.
• Create intuitive and powerful tools that allow customers to explore their data and configure meaningful alerts based on logs and metrics.
• Scale our API and alerting infrastructure to support a growing number of internal and external use cases.
• Collaborate with front‐end engineers and product managers to define API contracts and deliver a seamless data experience for our users.
• Ensure the operational health of our APIs and alerting systems by developing comprehensive monitoring and participating in an on‐call rotation.

Key Qualifications

• 3+ years of experience in software development covering distributed systems and scalable APIs.
• Strong programming skills (Go is preferable), with a deep understanding of best practices for building performant, customer‐facing services.
• Hands‐on experience with modern observability stacks, including Prometheus and Grafana, and handling high‐cardinality metrics at scale.
• Strong knowledge of SQL, including extensive experience with complex query optimisation.
• A solid foundation in computer science: algorithms, data structures, distributed systems, and concurrency.
• Strong analytical and problem‐solving skills, with a willingness to debug, troubleshoot, and learn about complex problems at high scale.
• Ability to work collaboratively in a team environment and communicate effectively with other teams across Cloudflare.
• Experience developing and scaling APIs, particularly GraphQL, is a strong plus.
• Experience with data streaming technologies (e.g., Kafka, Flink) for real‐time processing is a plus.
• Experience with Infrastructure as Code tools like SALT or Terraform is a plus.
• Experience with Linux container technologies, such as Docker and Kubernetes, is a plus.

If you're passionate about building scalable and performant data platforms using cutting‐edge technologies and want to work with a world‐class team of engineers, then we want to hear from you! Join us in our mission to help build a better internet for everyone.

What Makes Cloudflare Special?

We're not just a highly ambitious, large‐scale technology company – we have 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 its launch, 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 service is available publicly for everyone to use. We do not store client IP addresses – we stay true to 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 let us know if you need 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.