Senior Systems Engineer, Workers AI

Available Locations: Austin, TX or London, UK (Hybrid) 

About the role

You'll design and build the core infrastructure that powers AI inference across Cloudflare's global network — real-time voice, frontier open LLMs, and customer-deployed models running on a heterogeneous fleet of GPUs and next-generation accelerators in hundreds of cities worldwide. Working alongside AI/ML engineers, hardware partners, and Cloudflare product teams, you'll solve hard problems in distributed systems and high-performance computing: sub-second model cold starts, multi-accelerator workload scheduling, efficient KV cache management, and a model deployment platform serving both Cloudflare and customers bringing their own models. We're building an AI inference platform embedded in the fabric of the internet — something that doesn't exist yet — and this role puts you at the center of it. We're looking for high-agency systems engineers who are energized by foundational infrastructure problems and want to define how AI runs at the edge of the network.

Role Responsibilities

• Develop and maintain core components of the serverless inference platform to ensure high availability and scalability for Cloudflare users.
• Optimize the model scheduling system to significantly increase efficiency and resource utilization across our inference infrastructure.
• Implement improvements to the inference request routing logic to enhance overall performance and reduce latency for end-users.
• Drive significant, measurable improvements in the platform's reliability and resilience by identifying and mitigating systemic risks.
• Expand and refine the observability stack, including metrics, logging, and tracing, and fine-tune alerts to proactively identify and resolve production issues.
• Lead complex, cross-functional technical projects from initial concept and design through final deployment and operationalization.
• Act as a mentor to junior engineers and actively contribute to cultivating a strong, collaborative engineering culture within the team.

Role Requirements 

Must-Have Skills

• Experience in systems engineering, with a focus on distributed, high-performance systems.
• Expert proficiency in Rust programming, particularly in an asynchronous environment.
• Deep understanding and hands-on experience with relevant networking and application protocols (e.g., TCP, HTTP, WebSocket).
• Experience with scaling and performance optimization techniques, including load balancing and caching in a distributed environment.

Nice-to-Have Skills

• Demonstrable experience with container orchestration platforms, specifically Kubernetes and/or Nomad.
• Familiarity with the challenges and architectures involved in large-scale inference serving (e.g., LLM and diffusion models).

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!

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.