Distributed Systems Engineer - Data Platform - Analytics and Alerts

Cloudflare•San Francisco, CA

About The Position

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. We realize people do not fit into neat boxes. We are looking for curious and empathetic individuals who are committed to developing themselves and learning new skills, and we are ready to help you do that. We cannot complete our mission without building a diverse and inclusive team. We hire the best people based on an evaluation of their potential and support them throughout their time at Cloudflare. Come join us! Locations Available: London (UK), Lisbon (Portugal), or Austin (US) About Role 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: 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.

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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