Senior Solutions Engineer (Digital Native)

The ideal candidate will be a “builder” that has both a sales and technical background that enables them to drive customer engagement from technical professionals through to senior executive levels, and across Security, Network, Development and Infrastructure teams. Understanding cloud architecture (systems design and architecture patterns) will be essential to being effective in the role.

Our 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. Ultimately, you are passionate about technology and have the ability to explain complex technical concepts in easy-to-understand terms. 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.

You have:

• Built web applications before, or contributed to existing web applications in a meaningful way.
• Polished communication and executive presentation skills with the ability to drive a discussion with a broad range of stakeholders (from the web developer to head of platforms).
• A proven track record of building deep technical relationships with engineers and senior executives in large and strategic accounts.
• Experience in managing various stakeholder relationships to build consensus on security solutions/projects.
• Experience managing technical sales within large accounts.
• Developed champion-style relationships.
• Drove technical wins.
• Assisted with technical validation.
• A deep understanding of core industry components of Cloudflare solutions (and a desire to learn more): 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; HTTP technologies including reverse proxy (e.g., WAF and CDN), forward proxy (secure web gateway), serverless application development; 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 experience with one or more of JavaScript, Python, Golang, BASH.
• 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.
• (Desirable) Graduate-level degrees in Computer Science, Engineering or related fields. Reminder: this is not a strict requirement at all. Candidates from all walks of life are welcome.
• (Desirable) Relevant industry Certifications, Terraform experience.
• (Desirable) Exposure to emerging technical landscape trends such as machine learning, GenAI, DevOps, security operations etc.
• The ability to translate technical concepts and jargon for a wide variety of audiences: from systems engineers, to front-end developers, through to IT managers and C-levels in organizations.
• A desire to constantly learn new things and teach what you've learned to the broader team through internal and external blog posts, team demos, and product training sessions.
• A knack for understanding problems and finding creative ways to solve them.
• The ability to manage a project, work to deadlines, and prioritise between competing demands.

What the job involves:

Digital Native SEs at Cloudflare work with the most innovative and cutting-edge companies. In targeting high-growth, technologically advanced, Cloud native, Enterprise companies, SEs are positioned to drive in-depth product discussions while communicating and demonstrating value quickly to customers. This role within the digital native segment focuses on both the acquisition of prospective Digital Native accounts, as well as the expansion of existing customer accounts.

Cloudflare’s solutions engineering function is responsible for collaborating with clients from early-stage ideation through to planning for production. Being much more than an expert solely in Cloudflare’s services, our Senior Solutions Engineers are expected to sit alongside our peers in our clients, and to contribute their energy, ideas and opinion on solving the hard problems we face in our industry today. Often this means deep work on the art-of-the-possible (and sometimes being willing to put aside preconceptions on the impossible!).

On any given day, the role will provide both a challenging and rewarding opportunity to develop adjacent technology expertise as well as mastering key skills relating to technical and industry advocacy on behalf of our clients. A key aspect will be offering good practice guidance and adopting a deploy-to-production mindset, where it is as much about the operational process as it is about the product.

As part of our broader solutions engineering community, you will be working with colleagues with deep subject-matter expertise and industry knowledge upon whose insights will support your own. Of course, as a senior member of the team, you will also be in a position to contribute to a body-of-knowledge across key domains of networking, cybersecurity and edge computing, as well as industry analyses and perspectives.

As an SE, there will often be more than one way to solve a problem – hence what might be a best practice in a given context might not be true in another! This is where your experience will help.

On the Solutions Engineering team, you will find a collaborative environment where everyone brings different strengths and jumps in to help each other. As critical members of Cloudflare’s sales team, Solutions Engineers drive technical discussions and implementations to help generate new business, expand existing business, and keep our customers happy.

In business generation and expansion, you’ll be tasked with qualification of prospect and customer use cases, technical requirements discovery, leading demonstrations, solution identification and design, and collaborative work on proofs-of-concept (PoCs). For our existing customers, Solutions Engineers are part of a dedicated account team that advises the customer on technical best practices, implementation of Cloudflare products and features, and strategic guidance on internet security and performance.

The role requires 20-30% travel to attend meetings with prospects or customers, attend conferences and other industry events, and to collaborate with your Cloudflare teammates.