Systems Engineer - Authoritative DNS

Available Locations: Austin, TX
Working Approach: Hybrid, ~2 days from local office & up to 3 days from home
Summary
As a Systems Engineer on the Authoritative DNS team at Cloudflare, you will be a key contributor to one of the systems that help build a better Internet. You will take ownership of medium-to-large projects, driving them from initial design to successful completion with some supervision.
In this role, you will act as a natural point of contact for your projects, mentor junior engineers, and help improve the resilience and architecture of our systems. We are looking for an engineer who can solve complex issues with minimal help and contribute to shaping features and processes within a talented, collaborative team.
About the authoritative DNS team
Cloudflare runs one of the largest DNS infrastructures in the world. We run DNS for millions of Internet properties globally. Aggregated our authoritative DNS and resolver platforms handle around 3 trillion DNS queries per day
Our DNS systems are custom built internally, so we've developed a lot of proprietary technology that operates at scale, and we are iterating constantly to meet new scaling and reliability requirements.
You will get to be part of a team that builds and maintains one of the core Cloudflare systems. You will maintain and expand our DNS infrastructure and implement features for our customers. We like to think outside the box and come up with novel approaches and solutions that scales.
Responsibilities

• Design, scope, and implement medium-to-large features and projects that may involve multiple team members.
• Write high-quality, maintainable, and well-tested code that simplifies and improves the systems your team owns.
• Serve as a mentor and onboarding guide for junior team members, helping them grow through thoughtful code and design reviews.
• Act as a subject matter expert for moderately complex systems, becoming a go-to person for questions about the projects you work on.
• Debug and resolve complex service issues with minimal assistance, improving system resilience through refactoring and re-architecting.
• Proactively identify issues affecting the team and propose effective solutions to improve our processes and technology.
• Collaborate with Product and other stakeholders to provide meaningful input on product requirement documents (PRDs).

Requirements / Must-Have Skills

• BA/BS in Computer Science or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.
• A strong professional background (typically 3+ years) in software or systems engineering.
• Demonstrated expertise in one or more systems programming languages such as Go, Rust, Python, C++, or similar.
• Proven experience in designing and building scalable, distributed systems.
• Ability to drive projects to completion and scope work effectively for yourself and other team members.
• Excellent problem-solving skills with the ability to debug complex systems independently.
• Strong communication and mentorship skills, with a history of helping others on your team succeed.

Nice-to-Have Skills

• Experience running established team meetings or technical discussions.
• Contributions to technical documentation or talks that guide your team or organization.
• Experience interviewing and providing meaningful feedback on technical candidates.
• Familiarity with building services in a large-scale, high-performance environment.
• Open source contributions is a big bonus
• Knowledge of DNSSEC and various security extensions to DNS
• Knowledge of HTTP, TLS and CDN Networks

We encourage you to apply even if you don't feel you meet every single requirement. We're building a diverse team and are keen to hear from people who can bring different perspectives and experiences to Cloudflare.