Distributed Systems Engineer; Data Platform, Logs and Audit Logs

Requirements

• 3+ years of experience working in software development covering distributed systems and data pipelines
• Strong programming skills (Go is preferable), with a deep understanding of software development best practices for building resilient, high-throughput systems
• 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 experience with 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
• Experience with data streaming technologies (e.g., Kafka, Flink) is a strong plus
• Experience with various logging platforms or SIEMs (e.g., Splunk, Datadog, Sumo Logic) and storage destinations (e.g., S3, R2, GCS) 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
• If you're passionate about building scalable and performant data platforms using cutting‑edge technologies and want to work with a world‑class team of engineers, then we want to hear from you! Join us in our mission to help build a better internet for everyone!

• We are actively seeking experienced and highly motivated Distributed Systems Engineers to join Cloudflare’s dynamic DATA Organisation
• This is a pivotal opportunity to contribute to the future of data at Cloudflare, working on systems that are fundamental to our global operations and customer insights
• Our organisation is responsible for the entire data lifecycle, encompassing everything from initial ingestion and sophisticated processing to robust storage and efficient retrieval
• These systems are the backbone that power critical logs and analytics, providing our customers with real‑time, actionable visibility into the health, performance, and security of their online properties
• Our overarching mission is to empower customers to leverage their data effectively, enabling them to drive superior outcomes for their businesses
• To achieve this, we design, build, and maintain a suite of high‑performance, massively scalable distributed systems that are engineered to handle an unprecedented scale – processing well over a billion events per second
• As an engineer within our organisation, you will be presented with unique challenges across various critical parts of our intricate data stack
• This role offers the chance to work on cutting‑edge technologies and contribute to solutions that operate at the very edge of internet infrastructure
• This particular role is focused on the Logs and Audit Logs group. As a Software Engineer you will focus on the following areas:
• Design, build, and operate a robust logging platform, ensuring reliable logging, and secure data transfer to a wide array of customer destinations and third‑party integrations
• Develop and maintain high‑performance data connectors and integrations for our log‑shipping products, focusing on usability, scalability and data integrity
• Create and manage systems for handling comprehensive audit logs, ensuring they are delivered securely and adhere to strict compliance and performance standards
• Scale and optimise the data delivery pipeline to handle massive data volumes with low latency, identifying and removing bottlenecks in data processing and routing
• Work closely with Product and other engineering teams to define requirements for a new logging platform and integrations
• Maintain the operational health of our log delivery platform through comprehensive monitoring and participation in an on‑call rotation (with flexibility for out‑of‑hours technical issue resolution)
• Collaborate on the architectural evolution of our data egress platform, researching and implementing new technologies to improve efficiency and reliability