Hardware Systems Engineer

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

About The Department

Cloudflare’s Infrastructure group is responsible for building our global network. Our Hardware Engineering team helps research, develop, test, and deploy new equipment enabling 20% of the world’s internet traffic to be served smoothly. Deployed across 330 cities in 120+ countries, the hardware we select helps improve the security, reliability, and performance of the Internet.

About The Role

We need to make thoughtful infrastructure choices affecting a significant portion of the Internet. Hardware we work with includes servers and components, as well as PDUs and network hardware. As a Hardware Systems Engineer, you will work with colleagues on the Engineering teams, Product and Performance teams, and Hardware Sourcing teams to design, qualify and maintain Cloudflare’s worldwide fleet of servers

What You'll Do

Support and assist in the end to end server product qualification from concept to deployment, ensuring hardware designs (electrical, thermal and mechanical) are optimized for seamless, large-scale implementation by the Infrastructure Operations team.

Support and assist gathering product requirements for next generation of servers, and work with silicon vendors to assess performance and select the components (CPU, memory, disk, NIC, GPUs etc)

Collaborate closely with strategy, sourcing, and capacity planning teams to steer server infrastructure initiatives in alignment with Cloudflare’s business goals

Collaborate with the Site Reliability Engineering team to onboard and integrate the next generation of servers into provisioning tools and fleet management tools.

Collaborate with performance team and software teams to optimize software performance on the hardware

Collaborate with cross-functional teams to deploy firmware updates, triage hardware problem reports, resolve hardware issues, maintain automation tools.

Communicate your results and updates through blog posts and internal talks

Examples Of Desirable Skills, Knowledge And Experience

Bachelor’s degree in Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, or Computer Science

Foundational knowledge or internship/academic experience with compute design engineering, validation, performance benchmarking, debugging, and deployment used in the data center

Curiosity and desire to learn about the Cloudflare hardware and products used by 20% of all web sites

Desire to learn how a div