Senior Systems Engineer, Browser Isolation
Cloudflare · Austin +2 · 18h ago
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 (US), Lisbon (Portugal), London (UK)
About the team
Cloudflare Browser Isolation runs web content in remote browsers, helping protect users from threats while preserving a responsive browsing experience. Our team builds the Chromium-based browsing engine, remote rendering and streaming technology, and distributed services that manage browser sessions across Cloudflare’s global network.
You will work at the intersection of systems programming, distributed systems, and security. Engineers contribute across the product, collaborating on browser changes, service orchestration, observability, and build infrastructure.
Scope and growth
At this level, you will be accountable for outcomes across a problem area that may span several components. You will establish technical direction, make uncertainty and trade-offs explicit, and help other engineers succeed while remaining hands-on. This is an individual-contributor role; people-management experience is not required.
Technologies we use
- Browser engine: Chromium and C++.
- Systems programming: Rust.
- Distributed services and orchestration: Go, TypeScript, Cloudflare Workers, Nomad, and Consul.
- Remote rendering and streaming: WebRTC and Skia.
- Browser client: TypeScript, WebAssembly, and WebGL.
What you will do
- Lead complex, multi-component initiatives from problem definition and design through implementation, staged rollout, and measurable production outcomes.
- Design and implement changes in our Chromium-based C++ browser and the distributed services and systems components supporting remote browsing, working across Go, Rust, and TypeScript.
- Make and explain architectural trade-offs across latency, availability, resource efficiency, security boundaries, and operational complexity.
- Investigate difficult cross-layer failures and performance bottlenecks, distinguishing browser, host, network, and control-plane causes.
- Improve resilience, capacity management, observability, and release safety; define success metrics and validate results.
- Coordinate work with partner teams, surface dependencies and risks early, and guide delivery through ambiguity.
- Mentor engineers and raise the quality of code reviews, design reviews, testing, documentation, and operational practices.
- Participate in the team’s production on-call rotation after onboarding, lead technical incident investigations as needed, and drive durable corrective actions.
This role may require flexibility to be on-call outside of standard working hours to address technical issues as needed.
Desirable Skills, Knowledge, and Experience
- Strong production C++ proficiency, including memory and resource ownership, concurrency, and debugging in substantial codebases.
- A track record of independently leading complex systems or distributed-service improvements across multiple components, from an unclear problem to a reliable production outcome.
- Strong Linux/UNIX and networking fundamentals, with experience diagnosing correctness, latency, and resource-consumption issues using profiling and operational evidence.
- Experience designing and operating distributed systems, with sound judgment about service boundaries, data partitioning, consistency, timeouts and retries, backpressure, capacity limits, and recovery from partial failures.
- Experience designing safe rollout and recovery strategies and maintaining production software over its lifecycle.
- Ability to communicate trade-offs clearly, align stakeholders, mentor teammates, and improve engineering practices through constructive feedback.
- A willingness to work across C++, Rust, Go, and TypeScript and learn unfamiliar parts of the stack.
Bonus Points
These are preferred qualifications, not prerequisites. Prior Browser Isolation or Cloudflare experience is not required.
- Browser engines, Chromium, browser sandboxing, or security-sensitive systems.
- Low-latency streaming, graphics, remote computing, or other real-time systems.
- Container and workload orchestration, including Nomad or Kubernetes, and service discovery.
- Experience using Rust for systems programming or distributed services.
- Go or TypeScript; WebRTC, Skia, WebAssembly, or WebGL.
- Production observability, capacity planning, incident response, or build and release infrastructure.
Compensation
For Portugal based hires: Estimated annual salary is between €66,000 - €91,000.
The final offer will be inclusive of time exemption, in alignment with the applicable law and collective bargaining agreements.
Equity
This role is eligible to participate in Cloudflare’s equity plan.
Benefits
Cloudflare offers a complete package of benefits and programs to support you and your family. Our benefits programs can help you pay health care expenses, support caregiving, build capital for the future and make life a little easier and fun! The below is a description of our benefits for employees in the United States, and benefits may vary for employees based outside the U.S.
Health & Welfare Benefits
- Medical/Rx Insurance
- Dental Insurance
- Vision Insurance
- Flexible Spending Accounts
- Commuter Spending Accounts
- Fertility & Family Forming Benefits
- On-demand mental health support and Employee Assistance Program
- Global Travel Medical Insurance
Financial Benefits
- Short and Long Term Disability Insurance
- Life & Accident Insurance
- 401(k) Retirement Savings Plan
- Employee Stock Participation Plan
Time Off
- Flexible paid time off covering vacation and sick leave
- Leave programs, including parental, pregnancy health, medical, and bereavement leave
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: Since 2014, we've equipped more than 2,400 journalism and civil society organizations in 111 countries 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: In 2017, we created the 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. Since the project, we've provided services to more than 425 local government election websites in 33 states.
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!
Please note that applicants who progress to the offer stage of the interview process may be asked to attend an in-person interview within one of the Cloudflare Offices or Cloudflare Hubs. More details about this will be available at that stage of the interview process.
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.