Distributed Systems Engineer, Analytical Database Platform

Locations Available: Austin (US)
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 Org is composed of several key teams, and you could contribute to any of the following areas:

• Data Delivery: You will build and operate our distributed data delivery pipeline, a high-throughput, low-latency system (primarily written in Go) responsible for ingesting, processing, and routing massive volumes of data from across Cloudflare's global network to multi-core destination.
• Analytical Database Platform: Contribute to our core analytical platform powered by ClickHouse. This team builds and maintains a high-performance, scalable database platform optimised for the immense analytical workloads generated by our products and services.
• Data Retrieval: Be responsible for building the customer-facing products that make data accessible and actionable. This includes developing our public GraphQL API, building robust log delivery solutions and integrations with customer destinations, and contributing to our alerting products, which empower users to configure and receive near real-time alerts based on the logs and metrics observed by our data platform.

Responsibilities
As a Software Engineer in our Data Organisation depending on the team you join, you will focus on a subset of the following areas:

• Design, develop, and maintain scalable and reliable distributed systems across the entire data lifecycle.
• Build and optimise key components of our high-throughput data delivery platform to ensure data integrity and low-latency delivery.
• Develop new and improve existing components for the Cloudflare Analytical Platform to extend functionality and performance.
• Scale, monitor, and maintain the performance of our large-scale database clusters to accommodate the growing volume of data.
• Develop and enhance our customer-facing GraphQL APIs, log delivery, and alerting solutions, focusing on performance, reliability, and user experience.
• Work to identify and remove bottlenecks across our data platforms, from streamlining data ingestion processes to optimizing query performance.
• Collaborate with other teams across Cloudflare to understand their data needs and build solutions that empower them to make data-driven decisions.
• Collaborate with the ClickHouse open-source community to add new features and contribute to the upstream codebase.
• Participate in the development of the next generation of our data platforms, including researching and evaluating new technologies and approaches.

Key Qualifications

• 3+ years of experience working in software development covering distributed systems and databases.
• Strong programming skills (Golang is preferable), as well as a deep understanding of software development best practices and principles.
• 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 and database internals, including experience with database design, optimisation, and performance tuning.
• 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 ClickHouse is a plus.
• Experience with data streaming technologies (e.g., Kafka, Flink) is a plus.
• Experience developing and scaling APIs, particularly GraphQL, 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!
This role requires flexibility to be on-call outside of standard working hours to address technical issues as needed.