At Cloudflare, we have our eyes set on an ambitious goal: to help build a better Internet. Today the company runs one of the world’s largest networks that powers approximately 25 million 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! 

The Team

Our team's mission is to create advanced security solutions that enable our customers to filter out unwanted internet traffic. We achieve this by harnessing the vast amount of internet traffic data available to us and deriving deep, insightful analytics through the application of advanced machine learning techniques. Our focus is on developing machine learning models that can operate at a high volume and velocity with exceptional precision, performance, and scalability. One of our key challenges is creating and deploying models that can withstand a massive scale of 65 million peak requests per second. Our flagship Machine Learning products, WAF Attack Score and Page Shield ML, represent cutting-edge examples of our work in this space.

The team works in close collaboration with Product Managers, Software Engineers and others to collaboratively ship industry leading ML solutions. The core values to the team include empathy, resiliency, collaboration and ownership. The team measures their success on positive customer feedback, adoption and sustainability of our products.

The Role

We are currently seeking a highly experienced Senior Data Scientist with prior experience in Natural Language Processing (NLP) to join our Application Security team. In this role, you will work closely with our security experts to develop innovative solutions that leverage NLP to improve our security capabilities. This hands-on position will be responsible for development and deployment of highly scalable Machine Learning models from the ground up. As a key member of our team, you will have the opportunity to work on cutting-edge projects that require advanced NLP techniques, and to collaborate with other highly skilled professionals to deliver outstanding results. 

Our ideal candidate will have a strong background in developing high-performance, enterprise-scale services and a proven track record of delivering exceptional performance while maintaining operational stability. As a high-visibility position, success in this role will depend on your ability to effectively combine your data and modeling skills with your security acumen.

What you will do

• Collaborate with product managers, data engineers, machine learning engineers, and other stakeholders to define clear business objectives for Machine Learning products. 
• Conduct thorough literature reviews to identify current solutions and gaps, and conduct exploratory analysis to generate hypotheses and corresponding creative ML solutions to address these gaps.
• Lead the design, implementation, and training of statistical, machine learning, and deep learning models, and apply software engineering best practices to publish model scores, insights, and learnings at scale throughout the organization. 
• Continuously evaluate and improve the accuracy and performance of existing models. Integrate the learnings from the evaluation to improve model performance.
• Write comprehensive documentation that focuses on key takeaways in a clear and concise manner for both technical and non-technical audiences. 
• Develop a deep understanding of the data landscape, including tooling, tech stack, and source systems, and work closely with data engineers and machine learning engineers to improve data collection and quality.
• Align analysis efforts with the business/product strategy and high-level roadmap to enable data insights that support strategic goals. 
• Demonstrate the ability to identify macro and micro-level trends with statistical significance on a regular basis and understand the key drivers behind those trends.

Examples of desirable skills, knowledge and experience

• Minimum 5 years of Data Science experience with proven industry experience in a large scale environment (PBs scale, globally distributed teams). 
• Proficient in Python and R for commercial software development, and experience working with databases like Postgres.
• Excellent data analytical skills and ability to derive insights and propose models that lead to effective proof-of-concept (POC) development.
• Ability to work closely with cross-functional teams including business, engineering, and product teams to ensure data initiatives are aligned with business objectives.
• Strong communication and presentation skills catered to different audiences within the company.
• Proven track record of applying data insights and machine learning in order to address business needs and drive revenue. 
• Demonstrated ability to deliver results while taking feedback and maintaining a collaborative work environment.
• Proven ability to deliver performance (what) with the right behaviors (how)

Bonus Points

• Previous experience in developing efficient Machine Learning models with low latency (sub-millisecond) in a commercial setting
• Proven experience in Natural Language Processing (NLP) in a commercial environment
• Prior experience in Machine Learning for Web Security in a commercial setting

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: We equip politically and artistically important organizations and journalists 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: We created 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.

Path Forward Partnership: Since 2016, we have partnered with Path Forward, a nonprofit organization, to create 16-week positions for mid-career professionals who want to get back to the workplace after taking time off to care for a child, parent, or loved one.

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.