Distributed Systems Engineer - Data Platform - Analytics and Alerts

Role details

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. At Cloudflare, we’re not looking for people who wait for a polished roadmap; we’re looking for the builders who see the cracks in the Internet that everyone else has simply learned to live with. We value candidates who have the instinct to spot a "normalized" problem and the AI-native curiosity to create a solution using the latest tools. Our culture is built on iteration, leveraging AI to ship faster today to make it better tomorrow, while ensuring that every improvement, no matter how small, is shared across the team to lift everyone up. If you’re the type of person who values curiosity over bureaucracy, and that AI is a partner in solving tough problems to keep the Internet moving forward, you’ll fit right in. Locations Available: Atlanta, US, Austin, US, Denver, US, Seattle, US, Washington DC, US, Lisbon, Portugal About Role We are looking for experienced and highly motivated engineers to join our DATA Org and help build the future of data at Cloudflare. Our organisation is responsible for the entire data lifecycle - from ingestion and processing to storage and retrieval - powering the critical logs and analytics that provide our customers with real-time visibility into the health and performance of their online properties. Our mission is to empower customers to leverage their data to drive better outcomes for their business. We build and maintain a suite of high-performance, scalable systems that handle more than a billion events in a second. As an engineer in our organisation, you will have the opportunity to work on complex distributed systems challenges across different parts of our data stack. Our Data Organisation is strategically composed of several key teams, each focusing on a distinct aspect of our comprehensive data platform: Data Delivery / Data Pipeline: This team is responsible for the design, development, and operation of our distributed data delivery pipeline. This system is a high-throughput, low-latency powerhouse, primarily written in Go, and is tasked with ingesting, processing, and intelligently routing massive volumes of data originating from across Cloudflare’s vast global network to multiple core destinations. This involves handling diverse data types and ensuring reliable, timely delivery to various downstream systems. Analytical Database Platform: Engineers on this team contribute to and evolve our core analytical platform, which is powered by ClickHouse. This team is dedicated to building and maintaining a high-performance, scalable database platform meticulously optimised for the immense analytical workloads generated by all of Cloudflare’s products and services. This includes ensuring data integrity, query optimisation, and continuous platform scalability to meet ever-growing demands. Data Retrieval (Customer-Facing Products): This department is focused on building and continuously improving our customer-facing products, making data not only accessible but also genuinely actionable for our users. This department comprises two main groups: Analytics and Alerts: Members of this group are at the forefront of developing our public APIs such as the GraphQL Analytics API, providing customers and internal Cloudflare teams with flexible access to their data. They will also work on our alerting platform, empowering users to configure and receive near real-time alerts based on the critical logs and metrics observed by our robust data platform. This includes designing intuitive alerting mechanisms and ensuring the reliability of notification systems. Logs and Audit Logs: This specialised team is dedicated to building a robust and easy-to-use logging platform that powers reliable data delivery and seamless integrations with customer destinations. The team’s mission is to make it simple for customers to access, manage, and use their log data — ensuring that critical datasets, including comprehensive audit logs, are delivered securely and efficiently to their preferred storage and analysis platforms. The work spans developing intuitive connectors, ensuring data integrity, optimising delivery pipelines, and upholding strict standards for compliance, performance, and usability. Responsibilities This role is focusing on the Analytics and Alerts group. As a Software Engineer you will focus on the following areas: Develop and enhance our customer-facing APIs focusing on performance, reliability, and an intuitive user experience. Design, build, and maintain our near real-time alerting platform , from data processing and anomaly detection to reliable notification delivery. Optimise the performance of complex analytical queries that power our APIs and dashboards, working closely with the database platform team. Create intuitive and powerful tools that allow customers to explore their data and configure meaningful alerts based on logs and metrics. Scale our API and alerting infrastructure to support a growing number of internal and external use cases. Collaborate with front-end engineers and product managers to define API contracts and deliver a seamless data experience for our users. Ensure the operational health of our APIs and alerting systems by developing comprehensive