Data Center Network Operations Engineer

Cloudflare•San Francisco, CA

15h•$98,000 - $174,000

About The Position

Cloudflare is hiring a Data Center Network Operations Engineer to maintain and improve its global network infrastructure. The role works closely with Site Reliability Engineering, Network Engineering, Network Deployment Engineering, and external hardware, data center, network, logistics, and service-provider partners. It includes maintaining operational availability, supporting network infrastructure, developing consistent processes and visibility measures, and improving delivery efficiency and operational stability across remote locations. The position requires technical knowledge of data center colocation environments, physical networking, network architecture, and server technologies, along with communication, data analysis, and project-management capabilities. The engineer will document and coordinate work with remote contractors, use AI tools to automate operational tasks and accelerate documentation and troubleshooting, and participate in a shared on-call rotation supporting 24×7 global network availability. Limited travel may be required. Hiring locations are Atlanta, Austin, Denver, New York, San Francisco, Seattle, and Washington, D.C.

Requirements

Experience with Juniper, Cisco, and DWDM network equipment.
At least 4 years of Linux systems administration experience.
Experience managing and instructing remote contractors.
Familiarity with standing up infrastructure in remote colocation facilities.
Experience running and improving operational processes, including automation tooling, in a rapidly changing environment.
Familiarity with data center operations tasks and projects, including deployment, migration, and decommissioning.
Comfort with basic program management responsibilities such as prioritization, planning, scheduling, and status reporting using tools such as JIRA.
Strong verbal and written communication, problem-solving, attention-to-detail, and interpersonal skills.
Proactive approach, ability to learn quickly, and ability to execute on multiple tasks simultaneously.
Ability to manage Microsoft Excel and Google Sheets.
Team-player approach.

Nice To Haves

Bachelor’s degree; technical background in engineering, computer science, or MIS.
Direct experience executing complex data center or infrastructure projects.
Experience installing or maintaining data center and other IT infrastructure, and DCIM tools.
Multilingual abilities or experience working with infrastructure in multiple countries.
Comfort with remote “lights-out” and out-of-band access to data center resources.
Linux certifications such as RHCSA.
Network certifications such as CCNA or JNCIA, or higher.
Experience with configuration management systems such as SaltStack, Chef, Puppet, or Ansible.
Scripting or software development experience in Bash, Python, or Go.
Familiarity with load balancers and reverse proxies such as Nginx, Varnish, HAProxy, or Apache.
Experience working within a large-scale SaaS vendor.

Responsibilities

Collaborate with Infrastructure, Network Engineering, and SRE teams.
Create documentation and manage remote contractors performing data center tasks; coordinate with hardware manufacturers, data center and network providers, logistics partners, and other service providers supporting infrastructure across more than 330 cities and 125+ countries.
Maintain operational availability of the data center environment.
Use AI tools to automate repetitive operational tasks, accelerate documentation, and speed up troubleshooting and root-cause analysis.
Create and maintain documentation, plans, SOPs, and MOPs.
Support and configure network infrastructure as required.
Provide feedback to internal teams to support internal tools and external vendor partnerships.
Participate in a shared on-call rotation to maintain 24×7 operational availability of the global network.
Seek opportunities to introduce effective, efficient, scalable technology and automation that improve global infrastructure deployment and maintenance.
Assist with defining, documenting, and implementing consistent processes across regions.
Provide basic program management, including prioritization, planning, scheduling, and status reporting.