Principal Systems Engineer, R2 Storage

Locations: Austin, TX | New York, NY | San Francisco, CA | Seattle, WA | London, UK About the Department: Emerging Technologies & Incubation (ETI)
Emerging Technologies & Incubation (ETI) at Cloudflare is where we build and launch bold new products. We leverage Cloudflare's unique global network and edge to deliver innovative tools and solutions, solving problems at a scale impossible for most organizations. Join us to work on the bleeding edge.
About the Team: R2
The R2 team builds Cloudflare's object storage platform, offering developers durable, reliable storage seamlessly integrated with our Developer Platform (e.g., Workers). We own foundational infrastructure operating at massive scale, powering critical workloads across Cloudflare's global network. This involves designing and maintaining distributed systems for high throughput, strong consistency, durability, and a growing number of developer features.
You'll join a highly motivated and collaborative team that owns the full R2 stack, tackling complex distributed systems problems with a focus on global reliability and performance.
What You'll Do

• Set the technical direction for some of our most critical and complex infrastructure projects.
• Drive large-scale architectural decisions that span multiple teams and services.
• Design and implement systems that operate reliably under heavy load and at massive scale.
• Lead technical investigations and break down ambiguous problems into clear plans of action.
• Collaborate closely with engineers across teams, product managers, and infrastructure stakeholders to align goals and deliver on timelines.
• Be a key contributor to our roadmap - helping shape the future of R2's architecture, performance, and reliability.

Examples of desirable skills, knowledge, and experience

• Experience setting the architecture and technical direction for large, cross-team, and cross-functional engineering efforts.
• Strong systems-level programming skills.
• A deep understanding of distributed systems concepts such as consistency, consensus, data replication, and partition tolerance.
• Proven experience building and maintaining high-throughput, low-latency systems.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills; ability to explain technical decisions clearly and drive alignment.
• Comfortable operating in fast-paced environments with tight deadlines and evolving priorities.
• Experience with storage systems, networking, or large-scale cloud infrastructure is a strong plus.

Compensation
Compensation may be adjusted depending on work location.

• For New York City, Washington, and California (excluding Bay Area) based hires: Estimated annual salary of $230,000 - $281,000
• For Bay Area-based hires: Estimated annual salary of $234,000 - $286,000

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