Escalation Engineer, CDN/Developer Platform

Cloudflare•Austin, TX

10h

About The Position

The Customer Support Team solves complicated problems and answers technical inquiries via phone, email, chat, and social media. Whether it is a WordPress blogger using our services for free or a global Enterprise business with petabytes of web traffic, our team is always eager to assist. We are the eyes and ears of Cloudflare, acting as the real-time voice of the customer to help communicate their needs and real-world use cases back to the rest of the company - to help build a better service and future product development. The Cloudflare Escalation Engineer is a technical resource within support responsible for owning and resolving the most complex customer escalations. This role partners closely with Technical Support Engineers, proactively swarms on challenging cases, and provides hands-on guidance to accelerate issue resolution. Escalation Engineers lead deep technical investigations across the full stack, isolate and reproduce defects, and ensure accurate, timely communication throughout the escalation lifecycle. While they collaborate with Engineering and Product teams as needed, their primary focus is empowering the support organization, improving customer reliability, and driving high-quality outcomes for escalated customers. They contribute critical insights, document new knowledge, and help shape processes and readiness that strengthen the overall support experience.

Requirements

Minimum of 3 years’ hands-on experience supporting or engineering Application/Developer focused products.
Web Technologies: In-depth understanding of HTTP/S, RESTful APIs, and common web frameworks.
Front-end Performance: Knowledge of browser rendering, DOM manipulation, and optimization techniques for client-side applications.
Back-end Performance: Familiarity with server-side architecture, database interactions, and API performance tuning.
Developer Tools: Proficiency with tools like Chrome DevTools, curl, and IDE debuggers for diagnosing application issues.
Cloud Platforms: Understanding of cloud-native architectures, containerization (Docker, Kubernetes), and serverless functions.
Observability: Experience with monitoring, logging, and tracing tools (e.g. Sentry, Prometheus, Grafana, ELK stack, Jaeger) for application health and performance.
Security Principles: Awareness of common application vulnerabilities (OWASP Top 10), secure coding practices, and API security.
Developer Experience: Appreciation for developer workflows, SDKs, and API documentation.
Performance Optimization: Knowledge of caching strategies, CDN concepts, and load balancing.
Proficiency in application troubleshooting using profiling and tracing tools (e.g., Dynatrace, New Relic, OpenTelemetry).
Excellent verbal and written communication skills, with the ability to convey technical information clearly to both technical and non-technical audiences.
Demonstrated ability to manage multiple priorities and projects effectively in a fast-paced environment.
Extensive technical support experience
Expertise in troubleshooting application protocols (L7 - DNS, HTTP, etc)
Expertise in troubleshooting network infrastructure (L3/L4)
Expert with Linux command line tools (curl, dig, git, traceroute, mtr)
Expert at analyzing data using tools like grafana, kibana, and SQL
Able to clarify complex technical issues and coordinate efforts to resolve
Able to identify and share/suggest process improvements
Demonstrated leadership, prior mentoring experience
Self-motivated, self-directed, strong relationship building, can positively influence the actions of others, team player
Comfortable handling inbound and outbound customer calls

Nice To Haves

You are familiar with Cloudflare and are actively using our platform
Experience with regular expressions
Knowledge of web programming (HTML, Javascript, PHP) and scripting (bash, Python)
Experience managing/configuring non-HTTP applications (email, DNS, FTP, SSH, etc.)

Responsibilities

Advanced Troubleshooting & Root Cause Analysis
Investigate the most complex, high-impact customer issues escalated from front-line support (TSEs) and directly raised by customers.
Perform deep-dive debugging across the full technology stack application, database, infrastructure, APIs, and integrations.
Use logs, traces, diagnostics to identify the underlying cause.
Work with Engineering to validate defects, create reproducible scenarios, and confirm fixes.
Provide coverage (shift rotation including possibility of weekends and Pacific Time hours) for technical troubleshooting of escalated issues.
Cross-Functional Escalation Management
Manage escalation lifecycle from intake to closure, ensuring technical accuracy and timely communication.
Partner with Product and Engineering teams to drive bug fixes or workarounds.
Communicate status, risk, and resolution progress clearly to support leaders and customers (as appropriate).
Swarming & Collaboration with Support Teams
Proactively swarm on critical or complex cases with Technical Support Engineers within their regional or skill-based Pod.
Provide real-time guidance and mentoring during troubleshooting.
Be an expert engineer in the team, help front-line engineers improve their technical depth and escalation readiness.
Knowledge Creation & Enablement
Document new findings, diagnostic steps, and resolutions in internal knowledge bases.
Share insights from escalations to improve product documentation and support training.
Contribute to runbooks and automation that help prevent future escalations.
Readiness & Product Expertise
Stay current with new product releases, architecture changes, and known issues.
Participate in engineering syncs or release readiness reviews to represent the support perspective.
Serve as a subject matter expert (SME) in one or more technical domains.

Benefits

Cloudflare offers a complete package of benefits and programs to support you and your family. Our benefits programs can help you pay health care expenses, support caregiving, build capital for the future and make life a little easier and fun!
Medical/Rx Insurance
Dental Insurance
Vision Insurance
Flexible Spending Accounts
Commuter Spending Accounts
Fertility & Family Forming Benefits
On-demand mental health support and Employee Assistance Program
Global Travel Medical Insurance
Short and Long Term Disability Insurance
Life & Accident Insurance
401(k) Retirement Savings Plan
Employee Stock Participation Plan
Flexible paid time off covering vacation and sick leave
Leave programs, including parental, pregnancy health, medical, and bereavement leave