Solutions Strategy Lead
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 Location: Cincinnati, OH
About Solutions Engineering at Cloudflare
The Pre-Sales Solution Engineering organization owns the technical sale of the Cloudflare solution portfolio, ensuring maximal business value, fit-for-purpose solution design and adoption roadmap for our customers. Solutions Engineering is made up of individuals from a wide range of backgrounds - from Financial Consulting to Product Management, Customer Support to Software Engineering, and we are serious about building a diverse, experienced and curious team.
What you'll do as a Solution Strategy Lead
Strategic accounts require dedicated focus to scale with Cloudflare. Client Directors manage commercial relationships, negotiations, and quota attainment alongside solution engineers whose main focus is presales. This role extends both their capacity by becoming a trusted advisor dedicated to 1 or tops 5 accounts and taking a consultative approach to understanding the entire customer environment and driving transformation and adoption by coordinating cross-functional resources; this is not a hands on keyboard role but can drive those engagements as needed.
Platform Focus Areas
Helps accelerate adoption across three platform areas with equal priority:
App Modernization
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Scope: Migration from legacy application architectures to Cloudflare's edge platform. Includes moving workloads from on-premise or hyperscaler compute to Workers, consolidating storage on R2, and modernizing data layers with D1 and Durable Objects, all while considering security posture.
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Stakeholders: VP Engineering, Platform Architects, Infrastructure leads, CISO
Developer
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Scope: Adoption of Cloudflare's developer platform for new application development. Workers, Workers KV, Pages, Queues, Durable Objects, R2, D1. Positioning Cloudflare as the compute and storage layer for net-new projects.
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Stakeholders: VP Engineering, Developer Experience leads, Platform teams
AI
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Scope: Adoption of Cloudflare's AI infrastructure for inference and orchestration. Workers AI, Vectorize, AI Gateway. Positioning Cloudflare as the AI inference layer at the edge.
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Stakeholders: CTO, Head of AI/ML, Data Platform leads
Core Accountabilities
|
Accountability |
Description |
|
Platform Adoption Road Mapping |
Develop account-specific adoption plans across App Modernization, Developer, and AI. Map customer workloads to Cloudflare capabilities. Define sequencing and milestones. |
|
Cross-Functional Coordination |
Coordinate SE, CS, and Product resources against adoption milestones. Run account team operating rhythm. Ensure internal alignment on customer priorities. |
|
Technical Executive Relationships |
Build relationships with CTOs, VPs of Engineering, and Platform Architects. Engage technical decision-makers on platform strategy. CD retains procurement and CFO relationships. |
|
Expansion Development |
Identify and qualify platform expansion opportunities. Hand off to CD when commercial-ready. This individual builds the case; CD closes the deal. |
|
Voice of Customer to Product |
Bring strategic customer requirements into Product roadmap discussions. Provide quarterly briefings on adoption patterns, blockers, and feature needs. |
Success Metrics
Platform Adoption
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Products per account: Number of Cloudflare products in production per strategic account
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Developer platform adoption: Strategic accounts with Workers, R2, or D1 in production
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AI adoption: Strategic accounts with Workers AI or AI Gateway in production
Revenue Influence
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Expansion pipeline: Dollar value of platform expansion opportunities developed and handed to CD
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Net Revenue Retention: NRR on strategic account portfolio (shared metric with CD)
Product Feedback
- Requirements submitted: Strategic customer requirements brought to Product quarterly
- Adoption blockers resolved: Product or engineering issues addressed that were blocking adoption
Customer-Facing Positioning
- To customer executives, this role helps them realize value from Cloudflare's entire platform:
- An expert and trusted advisor; peer to their architects and technical leads
- Focused on Platform adoption and business outcomes, not transactions
- Turns platform capabilities into production workloads and business value
The Profile
- Architectural Command: 10+ years of experience in Solution Engineering Leadership, Product Management, Consulting, or Technical Strategy within a global SaaS or infrastructure environment.
- Executive Presence: Exceptional communication skills with the ability to influence C-level executives and internal product leads simultaneously.
- Relentless Curiosity: A natural obsession with "How it works" and "How it could be better." You are driven to discover the architectural truth behind every customer challenge.
- Bias for Action: You don't just identify problems; you build the "Formation" to solve them. You are comfortable in high-pressure, ambiguous environments.
Desirable skills, knowledge and experience
- 7+ years of deployment experience in similar role or experience in a technical leadership role
- Previous experience as a solution engineer leader, consultant or technical marketing engineer building, architecting or deploying security solutions
- Good understanding of AI, security challenges and its applicability to today’s enterprise landscape
- Proven track record using AI to help drive revenue.
- Strong knowledge of Security Architecture, Design and Operations
- Working knowledge of the broader threat landscape and the ability to distill technology trends, and explain complex behaviors in simple terms
- Proven experience working with customers and partners in successful design and deployment of solutions
- Ability to juggle and successfully drive projects with customers, prospects, and partners.
- Experience with cloud computing solutions implementations including Microsoft 365, Azure, Google, AWS.
Compensation
This role is eligible to earn incentive compensation under Cloudflare’s Sales Compensation Plan. The estimated annual salary range includes the on-target incentive compensation that may be attained in this role under the Sales Compensation Plan.
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.
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