Hardware Systems Engineer

Cloudflare•Austin, TX

About The Position

Cloudflare’s Infrastructure group builds and operates its global network, and the Hardware Engineering team researches, develops, tests, and deploys equipment across the company’s worldwide fleet. The Hardware Systems Engineer works with servers, components, PDUs, and network hardware, partnering with Engineering, Product, Performance, Hardware Sourcing, and other teams to design, qualify, and maintain server infrastructure. The role supports end-to-end server product qualification from concept through deployment, helping ensure electrical, thermal, and mechanical designs can be implemented at scale. It also contributes to requirements for next-generation servers, component selection with silicon vendors, onboarding into provisioning and fleet-management systems, hardware and software performance optimization, firmware deployment, hardware issue resolution, and technical communications. The position is available in Austin.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree in Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, or Computer Science.
Foundational knowledge or internship/academic experience in compute design engineering, validation, performance benchmarking, debugging, and deployment for data centers.
Curiosity and desire to learn about Cloudflare hardware and products.
Desire to learn how a diverse server fleet is managed at scale, including traffic management, capacity planning, and failover mechanisms.
Desire to learn the tools Cloudflare uses to maintain and monitor hardware.
Ability and interest in using AI tools and automation to accelerate the qualification lifecycle and improve efficiency and quality.
Organizational skills and interest in managing cross-functional technical projects and aligning architectural designs with delivery schedules.
Self-motivation, comfort working in ambiguous environments, bias for action, and ability to drive initiatives without close supervision.

Nice To Haves

Master’s degree in Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, or Computer Science.
Knowledge or experience with server hardware, including motherboard, chassis, and thermal designs, and CPU, memory, and storage technology.
Knowledge of Bash, Python, and basic Linux task automation.
Knowledge of Redfish, IPMI, and server remote-management protocols, and experience with firmware updates.
Knowledge or experience in performance optimization through hardware/software codesign.
Experience debugging server hardware faults and working with sourcing teams and vendors to improve quality.
Experience working with external vendors on server hardware qualification.
Experience with observability and monitoring tools such as Prometheus and Grafana, including observing trends over time.
Experience with software development tools and processes such as Git, TeamCity, and Jira.
Experience in a hyperscale cloud infrastructure role.

Responsibilities

Support end-to-end server product qualification from concept to deployment, ensuring electrical, thermal, and mechanical designs are optimized for large-scale implementation by Infrastructure Operations.
Help gather requirements for next-generation servers and work with silicon vendors to assess performance and select components such as CPUs, memory, disks, NICs, and GPUs.
Collaborate with strategy, sourcing, and capacity-planning teams to align server infrastructure initiatives with Cloudflare’s business goals.
Work with Site Reliability Engineering to onboard and integrate next-generation servers into provisioning and fleet-management tools.
Collaborate with performance and software teams to optimize software performance on hardware.
Work with cross-functional teams to deploy firmware updates, triage hardware problem reports, resolve hardware issues, and maintain automation tools.
Communicate results and updates through blog posts and internal talks.

Benefits

Medical/Rx insurance
Dental insurance
Vision insurance
Flexible spending accounts
Commuter spending accounts
Fertility and family-forming benefits
On-demand mental health support and Employee Assistance Program
Global travel medical insurance
Short- and long-term disability insurance
Life and 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
Eligibility to participate in Cloudflare’s equity plan