Systems Engineer, Network Protocols & Distributed Systems

<div class="content-intro"><h3>About Us</h3> <p>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.</p> <p>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.</p></div><p><strong>Location:</strong> London, Lisbon, or Austin - (Hybrid)</p> <p>Join the team helping shape the future of the Internet. We’re building high-performance systems that handle a <em>quarter of the Internet’s traffic</em>. Our work influences open standards (like QUIC, MASQUE, and ECH), involves close collaboration with the IETF, and pushes the boundaries of what's possible in networking and security.</p> <p>You don’t need to be an HTTP or cryptography expert to join — we’re looking for excellent engineers who love tough problems, want to learn deeply, and are excited to contribute to one of the most technically demanding areas of infrastructure.</p> <p><strong>What you’ll do</strong></p> <ul> <li>Build and operate systems that terminate HTTP and TLS at Internet scale</li> <li>Migrate core infrastructure from NGINX to a next-gen Rust-based proxy</li> <li>Measure and improve protocol performance across real-world traffic</li> <li>Contribute to open source and industry standards</li> <li>Learn from and work alongside some of the leading engineers in this space<br><br></li> </ul> <p><strong>You might be a good fit if you:</stro