Greenhouse ·
full-timeSenior Software Engineer, Distributed Databases
Cloudflare · Hybrid
Cloudflare operates a massive global network designed to improve the performance and security of internet applications. This role for a Senior Software Engineer focuses on the company's developer platform, specifically within the distributed database stack. The position involves deep technical work on query planning, transaction processing, and durable storage systems. You will be responsible for defining how data is read, modified, and recovered, ensuring system correctness under conditions of high concurrency and potential failure. Daily tasks include designing deterministic simulations to reproduce rare event orderings, managing stateful upgrades, and optimizing index selection and row operations. You will own major architectural changes from the initial design phase through to production deployment. This role is well-suited for an experienced engineer who has previously managed storage engines or correctness-sensitive stateful systems. Candidates should possess a strong understanding of isolation, replication, and consistency models, and be comfortable navigating complex, incomplete system boundaries to deliver robust, scalable database solutions.
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. Available Locations: Austin, TX | Seattle, WA | London, UK About the Role Cloudflare's Developer Platform powers stateful, data-intensive applications across our network. We're looking for a Senior Software Engineer to work across the database stack, from query planning and execution to transaction processing and durable storage. You'll make decisions that shape the consistency, durability, and latency guarantees that customer applications rely on. Correctness under concurrency and failure is central to the role. You'll define and implement how queries read and modify data, how concurrent transactions become visible, and how durable state is recovered. You'll validate these systems using deterministic simulation, workload testing, and evidence from production. Responsibilities Improve query planning and execution, including index selection, row reads and writes, and performance as data volumes and access patterns change. Build transaction and storage paths that make writes durable and reads consistent. Define when changes become visible, how commits survive failure, and how recovery restores a correct view of the data. Design deterministic simulations that make rare event orderings and failures reproducible. Plan stateful upgrades that cannot be reversed by rolling back software. Carry them through staged rollout, failover, and recovery without putting existing data at risk. Participate in the service's on-call rotation and incident response. Own major changes from design through production. Coordinate implementation across teams when a change spans multiple parts of the service, and help trace failures across those parts. Mentor other engineers through design reviews, debugging, and incident analysis involving concurrency, durability, and recovery. Desirable Skills, Knowledge & Experience You have owned a database, storage engine, transaction system, or similarly correctness-sensitive stateful system from architecture through production. You can make architecture and implementation decisions when requirements or system boundaries are incomplete. You understand how query execution, indexing, transaction processing, and durable state shape what developers and operators observe. You understand how concurrency control, isolation, replication, and snapshots shape consistency, durability, and recovery. You can apply those concepts when operations arrive out of order, components fail independently, or the network partitions. You write and debug concurrent production software in Rust, Go, C++, or another systems language. You can trace failures across process, network, and durable-state boundaries. You have operated stateful systems through rollouts, scaling events, incidents, and recovery. You know the difference between transient unavailability and incomplete or incorrect recovery, and when a system is safe to return to service. You have led investigations where failures crossed systems owned by several teams. Bonus Points You've worked on the internals of PostgreSQL, MySQL, Amazon Aurora, or another relational database and can trace a SQL operation from planning through commit. Your work on transaction processing or concurrency control has included defining snapshot visibility and recovery behavior. You've profiled database workloads and traced performance bottlenecks from query execution through durable storage. You've used deterministic simulation or another systematic method to uncover distribut
| Role | Senior Software Engineer, Distributed Databases |
|---|---|
| Company | Cloudflare |
| Location | Hybrid |
| Type | full-time |
| Compensation | Not disclosed |
| Posted | 2026-10-16 |
| Deadline | Rolling |
Typical process for this type of role
A general guide — the exact steps for this specific listing may vary; check the original posting for details.
- 1ApplicationSubmit your resume through the apply link.
- 2ScreeningRecruiter reviews your background against the role.
- 3AssessmentA technical test, assignment, or coding round, depending on the role.
- 4Interview(s)One or more rounds with the hiring team.
- 5OfferOffer letter with compensation and start date.
Before you apply
0/4Senior Software Engineer, Distributed Databases at Cloudflare: frequently asked questions
- What is the salary for this role?
- Cloudflare has not stated compensation in the listing. Check the original posting or ask during the application process.
- Is the Senior Software Engineer, Distributed Databases position remote, hybrid or onsite?
- The listing gives Hybrid as the location and does not state a work mode.
- What is the application deadline?
- Cloudflare has not listed a fixed deadline, so apply early in case the opening is filled.
- How do I apply for the Senior Software Engineer, Distributed Databases role?
- Use the Apply button on this page. It opens the original listing on boards.greenhouse.io, where you submit your application with the company.
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