Director, Customer Engineering

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.

What you will do as a Director, Customer Engineering

The Director, Customer Engineering is a senior leader who scales the Customer Engineering organization across a region, segment, or product domain. Leads multiple teams of Customer Engineers and their managers, sets the strategic direction for how Cloudflare technically engages with enterprise customers, and ensures the CE function operates as a unified, AI-augmented, high-performance GTM engine.

Reporting to a VP or Senior Leader of Customer Engineering, you will own commercial outcomes, team development, operational systems, and cross-functional execution - serving as the executive bridge between field reality and company strategy.

Key Responsibilities

• Organizational Leadership: Build, develop, and scale a multi-team CE organization across levels and geographies. Hire and develop front-line managers, create succession plans, and maintain a high bar for both technical and commercial talent.
• Commercial Ownership: Own the CE number for your region, segment, or domain. Lead forecasting, pipeline reviews, win/loss analysis, and strategic account planning. Be accountable for new business acquisition, retention, expansion, and platform consumption targets.
• GTM Strategy & Execution: Shape how Customer Engineering partners with Sales, Customer Experience, Professional Services, and Product. Define territory and account strategies, allocate coverage models, and ensure the CE function drives platform-led selling.
• Executive Coaching & Standards: Elevate the capability of the CE management team. Coach managers on deal strategy, people development, technical architecture review, and executive communication. Set the standard for what great CE leadership looks like.
• Operational Scale & AI Enablement: Build the systems, dashboards, and AI-augmented workflows that allow CEs to spend more time on high-value customer work. Champion automation, tooling, and repeatable plays across the organization.
• Cross-Functional Influence: Represent Customer Engineering in executive forums, product roadmap discussions, and enablement planning. Translate field signals into actionable feedback for Product, Engineering, Support, and Marketing.
• Customer & Market Presence: Act as an executive technical sponsor for strategic customers and prospects. Serve as a visible leader in industry events, executive business reviews, and executive customer engagements.
• Culture & Transformation: Model Cloudflare’s values and drive the cultural evolution into the unified CE operating model. Ensure teams embrace full-lifecycle ownership, AI productivity, and continuous improvement.

Minimum Qualifications

• Experience: 10+ years of experience in technical go-to-market roles with a demonstrated track record of building and managing high-performing teams in SaaS, cloud, or infrastructure companies. Prior experience managing managers and owning revenue targets at scale is required.
• Revenue & Commercial Acumen: Proven experience owning and forecasting a large CE or Solutions Engineering revenue number in an enterprise B2B or infrastructure environment. Deep understanding of ACV, renewal, expansion, consumption, and platform economics.
• Leadership & Executive Presence: Exceptional ability to inspire, coach, and develop senior managers and senior individual contributors. Comfortable presenting to and influencing C-level executives inside and outside Cloudflare.
• Strategic Thinking: Ability to synthesize market signals, customer feedback, and business data into a clear operating plan for a multi-team organization.
• Communication: Outstanding written and verbal communication skills. Capable of representing the CE organization in executive reviews, board-level discussions, and large internal forums.
• Technical Fluency: We do not expect directors to be hands-on across every technical domain. Qualified candidates will demonstrate fluency in at least two or three of the areas below, with the ability to engage credibly in architecture and commercial conversations:
• Internet fundamentals: Strong understanding of DNS, HTTP(S), TCP/IP, BGP, SSL/TLS, and network architecture.
• Security: Foundational knowledge of WAF, Bot Management, Zero Trust, SASE, DDoS mitigation, and modern enterprise security posture.
• Performance / Networking: Foundational knowledge of caching, latency, content delivery, traffic steering, and global network architecture.
• AI & Platform: Familiarity with AI-augmented workflows, LLMs, automation, cloud platforms, edge services, and developer tooling.

Strongly Preferred Qualifications

• Cloudflare Domain Expertise: Direct experience with Cloudflare’s product portfolio, including Application Security, CDN, Zero Trust/SASE, Network Services, or AI/Workers platform.
• Global Scale: Experience leading distributed teams across multiple regions and time zones.
• Transformation Leadership: Proven track record of leading through organizational change, role redefinition, and operating model evolution.
• Executive Customer Engagement: Experience as an executive sponsor for Fortune 500 or strategic accounts.
• Operational Rigor: Track record of building dashboards, playbooks, and scalable processes for technical field organizations.

Education:

Undergraduate or graduate degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Business, or a related field.

Travel

This role may require travel up to 25–50% to attend customer meetings, executive briefings, team offsites, industry events, and in-person collaboration.

Compensation

This role features a competitive base salary and a variable compensation structure tied directly to the CE organization’s performance against new business acquisition, expansion, adoption, and retention targets.

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.