About Us

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! 

Available 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 will perform deep, technical troubleshooting for complex, escalated issues. This role owns the customer escalation process and works with various Product and Engineering teams to identify product bugs, network problems, and platform issues. Escalation Engineers foster a close relationship with SRE, Network, Engineering and Product teams. They act as an escalation point, isolate/replicate problems, and gather technical information/expectation.

Responsibilities

• Serve as a subject-matter expert in supporting network, routing and transport layer protocols such as BGP, OSPF, IPSec, GRE, TCP, UDP, etc.
• Serve as a subject-matter expert in supporting Security products and technologies such as WAF, Firewall, IPS, DDoS, etc.
• Collaborate closely with engineering and product teams to escalate issues, provide root cause analysis, and contribute to product improvements.
• Create and maintain detailed knowledge base articles, troubleshooting guides, and technical documentation.
• Provide coverage (shift rotation, including possibility of weekends and Pacific Time hours) for technical troubleshooting of escalated issues.
• Triage Customer Escalation issues to find the quickest, most efficient path of resolution.
• Work cross-functionally with various teams across the company, from engineering to sales.

Requirements

• Minimum of 3 years’ hands-on experience supporting enterprise network and/or security environments.
• Strong foundation in networking and security principles, technologies, and troubleshooting, including:
• TCP/IP fundamentals, including OSI model, IPv4/IPv6 addressing, subnetting, routing, and switching
• Common network protocols such as DNS, DHCP, HTTP/S, SNMP, SMTP, NTP, and FTP/SFTP
• Routing protocols including BGP, OSPF, and EIGRP, with an understanding of path selection
• Firewall concepts such as stateful/stateless inspection, rule sets, NAT, and ACLs
• VPN technologies and encryption methods (IPSec, SSL/TLS)
• Network segmentation and Zero Trust security models
• Intrusion detection and prevention (IDS/IPS)
• Endpoint and network threat mitigation strategies
• Security incident response processes and basic forensic principles
• Proficiency in network troubleshooting using packet capture and analysis tools (e.g., Wireshark, tcpdump).
• 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.

Core competencies (“Desired skills, knowledge and experience”)

• 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.

Bonus Points

• 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).
• Experience with cloud networking and security in AWS, Azure, or GCP.

 

What Makes Cloudflare Special?

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. Here’s the deal - 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.

Sound like something you’d like to be a part of? We’d love to hear from you!

This position may require access to information protected under U.S. export control laws, including the U.S. Export Administration Regulations. Please note that any offer of employment may be conditioned on your authorization to receive software or technology controlled under these U.S. export laws without sponsorship for an export license.

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 hr@cloudflare.com or via mail at 101 Townsend St. San Francisco, CA 94107.