Escalation Engineer, Zero Trust

Cloudflare•San Francisco, CA

About The Position

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! Job Location: Austin, TX About the Department 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. Role Summary 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

Solid understanding of Zero Trust principles and technologies such as:
Identity and Access Management
Endpoint Detection & Response
Network Security / Microsegmentation
Secure Web Gateway / Cloud Access Security Broker (CASB)
3-5 years of technical troubleshooting experience, preferably in technical support or system reliability engineering
Excellent verbal and written communication skills, ability to disseminate clear and appropriate information to both business and technical audiences
Able to manage multiple priorities, commitments, and projects
You understand and have previous experience working with Identity and Access Management protocols and technologies (SSO, SAML, OAuth, Federation, SCIM, etc.)
You understand and have previous experience supporting and troubleshooting multi-factor mechanisms (TOTP, SMS, FIDO, U2F, WebAuth, EMAIL, Push MFA, etc).

Nice To Haves

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
You are familiar with Cloudflare Zero Trust products (Zero Trust / Access / Gateway / Tunnel, WARP client) and have a site actively using our platform
You have a solid grasp of problem-solving with command line tools (dig / traceroute / curl / tcpdump)
Familiarity with troubleshooting Windows, macOS, and Linux operating systems
You are familiar with Apache, Nginx, IIS, and other web servers
You have worked with PostgreSQL, MySQL, MS SQL or other database servers

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.
Serve as a subject matter expert in supporting Zero Trust technologies such as identity and access management (IAM), secure access service edge (SASE), endpoint security, and network segmentation tools.
Troubleshoot complex technical issues across a broad set of systems including authentication flows (SSO, MFA), policy enforcement, and secure application access.
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.