Senior Systems Engineer, Workers AI

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.

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 London, UK (Hybrid)

About The Role

You’ll design and build the core infrastructure that powers AI inference across Cloudflare’s global network — real‑time voice, frontier open LLMs, and customer‑deployed models running on a heterogeneous fleet of GPUs and next‑generation accelerators in hundreds of cities worldwide. Working alongside AI/ML engineers, hardware partners, and Cloudflare product teams, you’ll solve hard problems in distributed systems and high‑performance computing: sub‑second model cold starts, multi‑accelerator workload scheduling, efficient KV cache management, and a model deployment platform serving both Cloudflare and customers bringing their own models. We’re building an AI inference platform embedded in the fabric of the internet — something that doesn’t exist yet — and this role puts you at the center of it. We’re looking for high‑agency systems engineers who are energized by foundational infrastructure problems and want to define how AI runs at the edge of the network.

Role Responsibilities

• Develop and maintain core components of the serverless inference platform to ensure high availability and scalability for Cloudflare users.
• Optimize the model scheduling system to significantly increase efficiency and resource utilization across our inference infrastructure.
• Implement improvements to the inference request routing logic to enhance overall performance and reduce latency for end-users.
• Drive significant, measurable improvements in the platform’s reliability and resilience by identifying and mitigating systemic risks.
• Expand and refine the observability stack, including metrics, logging, and tracing, and fine‑tune alerts to proactively identify and resolve production issues.
• Lead complex, cross‑functional technical projects from initial concept and design through final deployment and operationalization.
• Act as a mentor to junior engineers and actively contribute to cultivating a strong, collaborative engineering culture within the team.

Role Requirements

Must‑Have Skills

• Experience in systems engineering, with a focus on distributed, high‑performance systems.
• Expert proficiency in Rust programming, particularly in an asynchronous environment.
• Deep understanding and hands‑on experience with relevant networking and application protocols (e.g., TCP, HTTP, WebSocket).
• Experience with scaling and performance optimization techniques, including load balancing and caching in a distributed environment.

Nice‑to‑Have Skills

• Demonstrable experience with container orchestration platforms, specifically Kubernetes and/or Nomad.
• Familiarity with the challenges and architectures involved in large‑scale inference serving (e.g., LLM and diffusion models).

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.

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.