Forward Deployed Engineer

Cloudflare•San Francisco, CA

1d•Onsite

About The Position

Cloudflare’s Forward Deployed Engineers (FDEs) operate at the intersection of product engineering and customer impact. As an FDE, you will be embedded within one of Cloudflare’s most strategic global customers, working side-by-side with their engineering teams to build and deploy solutions using Cloudflare’s platform. Unlike traditional Solutions Architects or consultants, you will write production code, shape technical architecture, and directly influence how Cloudflare products are used at massive scale. You will operate as a technical extension of both organizations - helping the customer ship faster while surfacing real-world product insights back to Cloudflare engineering. This role is ideal for engineers who want to: Stay deeply technical Work on real production systems Influence product direction Build long-term partnerships with world-class engineering teams

Requirements

5+ years of professional software engineering experience. You are a builder at heart, with a track record of delivering production-grade systems, not just advising on them.
You have owned mission-critical services with real-world users. You understand the gravity of on-call rotations, the urgency of incident response, and the architectural rigor required to maintain "five nines" uptime.
You are currently in the IDE. You have a "ship-first" mentality and maintain a high velocity, staying current with modern frameworks, languages, and deployment patterns.
Broad technical fluency across the entire stack—from frontend performance and backend logic to database optimization and distributed infrastructure.
You have integrated AI-augmented workflows (e.g., Windsurf, OpenCode) into your daily development cycle to accelerate prototyping and delivery.
Ability to decompose complex business requirements into scalable, resilient technical architectures. You can visualize the "big picture" without losing sight of the implementation details.
Deep experience with at least one major cloud provider (AWS, GCP, or Azure), including an understanding of serverless, networking, and security primitives.
You are a self-starter who thrives in "zero-to-one" environments. You don't wait for a ticket; you identify the problem and own the solution from end-to-end.
Comfortable engaging in high-stakes technical and strategic discussions with VP-level stakeholders, with the ability to translate complex engineering trade-offs into business impact.

Nice To Haves

Direct experience building on Cloudflare Workers, or the broader Cloudflare Developer Platform.
Previous experience at a fast-paced startup or in a customer-facing engineering role where you operated directly within a partner’s codebase.
A visible public profile, including open-source contributions, technical blogging, or speaking engagements at industry conferences.

Responsibilities

Serve as the dedicated, long-term technical partner within a strategic customer’s engineering organization, operating as a trusted extension of their team.
Design, build, and deploy production-ready code and configurations directly into customer infrastructure using the Cloudflare platform.
Own the account's technical success across the entire Cloudflare portfolio. Serve as the primary technical point of contact, with other Cloudflare technical resources taking direction from your technical strategy for the account.
Participate in customer engineering rituals, including daily standups, design reviews, and real-time incident response.
Identify opportunities to accelerate the adoption of Cloudflare services, unlocking new capabilities across the customer’s tech stack.
Deep technical competence in building production applications on a modern stack, combined with the willingness and ability to go deep on all Cloudflare product areas. From Workers to security, networking, and observability.
Surface real-world edge cases and product gaps directly to Cloudflare’s Product and Engineering teams to influence the developer platform roadmap.
Establish and maintain trusted technical relationships with senior leadership (Staff+ engineers, Directors, and VPs).
Maintain a regular on-site presence at customer locations to foster deep collaboration and cultural alignment.

Benefits

We’re not just a highly ambitious, large-scale technology company. We’re a highly ambitious, large-scale technology company with a soul.
Fundamental to our mission to help build a better Internet is protecting the free and open Internet.
Project Galileo : Since 2014, we've equipped more than 2,400 journalism and civil society organizations in 111 countries with powerful tools to defend themselves against attacks that would otherwise censor their work, technology already used by Cloudflare’s enterprise customers--at no cost.
Athenian Project : In 2017, we created the Athenian Project to ensure that state and local governments have the highest level of protection and reliability for free, so that their constituents have access to election information and voter registration. Since the project, we've provided services to more than 425 local government election websites in 33 states.
1.1.1.1 : We released 1.1.1.1 to help fix the foundation of the Internet by building a faster, more secure and privacy-centric public DNS resolver. This is available publicly for everyone to use - it is the first consumer-focused service Cloudflare has ever released.
We don’t store client IP addresses never, ever.
We will continue to abide by our privacy commitment and ensure that no user data is sold to advertisers or used to target consumers.
Cloudflare is proud to be an equal opportunity employer.
We are committed to providing equal employment opportunity for all people and place great value in both diversity and inclusiveness.
All qualified applicants will be considered for employment without regard to their, or any other person's, perceived or actual race, color, religion, sex, gender, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, national origin, ancestry, citizenship, age, physical or mental disability, medical condition, family care status, or any other basis protected by law.
We are an AA/Veterans/Disabled Employer.
Cloudflare provides reasonable accommodations to qualified individuals with disabilities.
Please tell us if you require a reasonable accommodation to apply for a job.
Examples of reasonable accommodations include, but are not limited to, changing the application process, providing documents in an alternate format, using a sign language interpreter, or using specialized equipment.
If you require a reasonable accommodation to apply for a job, please contact us via e-mail at [email protected] or via mail at 101 Townsend St. San Francisco, CA 94107.