Principal Software Engineer, Identity Access Management - San Francisco - Cloudflare Inc

Description

Principal Software Engineer, Identity Access Management

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.

We realize people do not fit into neat boxes. We are looking for curious and empathetic individuals who are committed to developing themselves and learning new skills, and we are ready to help you do that. We cannot complete our mission without building a diverse and inclusive team. Come join us

Cloudflare's Engineering Team builds and runs the software that handles large volumes of HTTP requests on the Internet today. We also build and run the internal tools that power our software. Within this organization, the Identity and Access Management (IAM) team is the foundation of our Control Plane. We are responsible for the security, scalability, and reliability of how every customer and internal service interacts with the Cloudflare ecosystem.

What You'll Do

As a Principal Engineer, you will be the technical north star for our IAM and Control Plane strategy. Your role transcends individual features; you will be responsible for the long-term health and architectural evolution of our identity systems.

• Architectural Leadership: Lead the design and evolution of high-throughput, low-latency IAM systems that power both customer-facing and internal service APIs.
• Technical Strategy: Define the roadmap for migrating or scaling our legacy authentication and authorization systems into modern, distributed architectures.
• Cross-Functional Influence: Work closely with Product, Security, and UX teams to translate complex business requirements into robust, secure technical specifications.
• Mentorship & Excellence: Set the standard for engineering excellence through deep code reviews, technical design documents, and mentoring senior engineers.
• Operational Stewardship: Oversee the reliability of a platform under constant load, ensuring observability and resilience are baked into the core of the system.

Required Experience (Must-Have Skills)

• Extensive Experience: 10+ years of professional experience building and managing software applications at a massive scale (with at least 5 years at a Senior or Staff level).
• Identity Domain Expertise: Deep understanding of IAM protocols (OAuth2, OIDC, SAML), RBAC/ABAC models, and the security implications of session management at the edge.
• Distributed Systems Mastery: Proven track record in designing, architecting, and debugging large-scale distributed systems that handle global traffic.
• Language Proficiency: Deep knowledge of Go (our primary backend language), though expertise in TypeScript, Rust, C++, or similar is highly valued.
• Database & Storage: Expert-level knowledge of relational databases (PostgreSQL) and distributed caching/storage strategies.
• API Stewardship: Significant experience designing and versioning public-facing APIs that are used by millions of developers.

Desirable Skills & Experience

• Cloudflare Ecosystem: Experience building on Cloudflare Workers or similar serverless/edge computing environments.
• Observability Advocate: A passion for building "observable" systems using Prometheus, Grafana, and Kibana to proactively identify failures.
• Infrastructure as Code: Experience with modern containerized deployment (Docker & Kubernetes), Terraform, and infrastructure automation.
• Security Mindset: A background in security engineering or formal verification of protocol implementations.
• Strategic Delivery: A history of leading multi-quarter projects from conception to global rollout in partnership with product owners.

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 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 or via mail at 101 Townsend St. San Francisco, CA 94107.