Senior Forward Deployed Engineer

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 About the Role Cloudflare’s Senior Forward Deployed Engineers (FDEs) operate at the intersection of product engineering and customer impact. As an FDE, you will be embedded within one of Cloudflare’s most strategic global customers, working side-by-side with their engineering teams to build and deploy solutions using Cloudflare’s platform. Unlike traditional Solutions Architects or consultants, you will write production code, shape technical architecture, and directly influence how Cloudflare products are used at massive scale. You will operate as a technical extension of both organizations - helping the customer ship faster while surfacing real-world product insights back to Cloudflare engineering. Responsibilities This role is ideal for engineers who want to: - Stay deeply technical - Work on real production systems - Influence product direction - Build long-term partnerships with world-class engineering teams - Deep Technical Embedding: Serve as the dedicated, long-term technical partner within a strategic customer’s engineering organization, operating as a trusted extension of their team. - Production-Level Engineering: Design, build, and deploy production-ready code and configurations directly into customer infrastructure using the Cloudflare platform. - Technical Accountability: Own the account's technical success across the entire Cloudflare portfolio. Serve as the primary technical point of contact, with other Cloudflare technical resources taking direction from your technical strategy for the account. - Operational Integration: Participate in customer engineering rituals, including daily standups, design reviews, and real-time incident response. - Platform Advocacy & Adoption: Identify opportunities to accelerate the adoption of Cloudflare services, unlocking new capabilities across the customer’s tech stack. - Platform Breadth & Depth: Deep technical competence in building production applications on a modern stack, combined with the willingness and ability to go deep on all Cloudflare product areas. From Workers to security, networking, and observability. - Feedback Loop & Product Influence: Surface real-world edge cases and product gaps directly to Cloudflare’s Product and Engineering teams to influence the developer platform roadmap. - Strategic Relationship Management: Establish and maintain trusted technical relationships with senior leadership (Staff+ engineers, Directors, and VPs). - On-Site Presence: Maintain a regular on-site presence at customer locations to foster deep collaboration and cultural alignment. Desirable Skills, Knowledge, and Experience - Proven Engineering Pedigree: 7+ years of professional software engineering experience. You are a builder at heart, with a track record of delivering production-grade systems, not just advising on them. - Production Ownership & Operational Maturity: You have owned mission-critical services with real-world users. You understand the gravity of on-call rotations, the urgency of incident response, and the architectural rigor required to maintain "five nines" uptime. - Active Practitioner: You are currently in the IDE. You have a "ship-first" mentality and maintain a high velocity, staying current with modern frameworks, languages, and deployment patterns. - Full-Stack Architectural Depth: Broad technical fluency across the entire stack—from frontend performance an