Distributed Systems Engineer - Data Platform - Analytics and Alerts

Cloudflare•Austin, TX

About The Position

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 is responsible for the design, development, and operation of our distributed data delivery pipeline. This system is a high-throughput, low-latency powerhouse, primarily written in Go, and is tasked with ingesting, processing, and intelligently routing massive volumes of data originating from across Cloudflare’s vast global network to multiple core destinations. This involves handling diverse data types and ensuring reliable, timely delivery to various downstream systems. Analytical Database Platform: Engineers on this team contribute to and evolve our core analytical platform, which is powered by ClickHouse. This team is dedicated to building and maintaining a high-performance, scalable database platform meticulously optimised for the immense analytical workloads generated by all of Cloudflare’s products and services. This includes ensuring data integrity, query optimisation, and continuous platform scalability to meet ever-growing demands. Data Retrieval (Customer-Facing Products): This department is focused on building and continuously improving our customer-facing products, making data not only accessible but also genuinely actionable for our users. This department comprises two main groups: Analytics and Alerts: Members of this group are at the forefront of developing our public APIs such as the GraphQL Analytics API, providing customers and internal Cloudflare teams with flexible access to their data. They will also work on our alerting platform, empowering users to configure and receive near real-time alerts based on the critical logs and metrics observed by our robust data platform. This includes designing intuitive alerting mechanisms and ensuring the reliability of notification systems. Logs and Audit Logs: This specialised team is dedicated to building a robust and easy-to-use logging platform that powers reliable data delivery and seamless integrations with customer destinations. The team’s mission is to make it simple for customers to access, manage, and use their log data — ensuring that critical datasets, including comprehensive audit logs, are delivered securely and efficiently to their preferred storage and analysis platforms. The work spans developing intuitive connectors, ensuring data integrity, optimising delivery pipelines, and upholding strict standards for compliance, performance, and usability. This role is focusing on the Analytics and Alerts group.

Requirements

3+ years of experience working in software development covering distributed systems and scalable APIs.
Strong programming skills (Go is preferable), with a deep understanding of software development best practices for building performant, customer-facing services.
Hands-on experience with modern observability stacks, including Prometheus, Grafana, and a strong understanding of handling high-cardinality metrics at scale.
Strong knowledge of SQL, including extensive experience with complex query optimisation.
A solid foundation in computer science, including 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.

Nice To Haves

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.

Responsibilities

Develop and enhance our customer-facing APIs focusing on performance, reliability, and an intuitive user experience.
Design, build, and maintain our near real-time alerting platform, from data processing and anomaly detection to reliable notification delivery.
Optimise 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 (with the flexibility to be on-call outside of standard working hours as needed).

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