Work Location: Paris

What you’ll do

Cloudflare’s solutions engineering function is responsible for collaborating with clients from early-stage ideation through to planning for production. Being much more than an expert solely in Cloudflare’s services, our Senior Solutions Engineers are expected to sit alongside our peers in our clients, and to contribute their energy, ideas and opinion on solving the hard problems we face in our industry today. Often this means deep work on the art-of-the possible (and sometimes being willing to put aside preconceptions on the impossible!).

On any given day, the role will provide both a challenging and rewarding opportunity to develop adjacent technology expertise as well as mastering key skills relating to technical and industry advocacy on behalf of our clients. A key aspect will be offering good* practice guidance and adopting a deploy-to-production mindset, where it is as much about the operational process as it is about the product. 

As part of our broader solutions engineering community, you will be working alongside peers with deep subject-matter expertise and industry knowledge upon whose insights will support your own. Of course, as a senior member of the team, you will also be in a position to contribute to a body-of-knowledge across key domains of networking, cybersecurity and edge computing, as well as industry analyses and perspectives. 

For this role, our Solutions Engineering team members focus on large clients for whom we are able to develop deep understanding and partnership to collaborate with. Building on a track-record of success, this role has an emphasis on supporting our clients in both local and central government, as well as select private sector clients where appropriate. Previous experience in supporting the public sector is beneficial, however not mandatory.

* As an SE, there will often be more than one way to solve a problem - hence what might be a best practice in a given context might not be true in another! This is where your experience will help.

Who we are

The problems that our clients face are both diverse and unique - which is reflected in how we think about our Solution Engineering team. Building on the benefit of the hive-mind, our SE team is made up of individuals from a wide range of backgrounds - from end-customers to other vendors, Financial Consulting to Product Management, Customer Support to Software Engineering. In short, if we are to solve complex problems we need a diverse, curious and collaborative team.

Cloudflare’s mission is one which is both simple and timeless, to help build a better Internet. This requires a broad set of services and associated knowledge of Internet performance and security technology. We recognise many of our team usually join us with one or two core domains of expertise, however key to success is the curiosity to maintain and develop new knowledge which is essential to keeping up with the high rate of product innovation at Cloudflare. 

In our aim to support your success, all the resources and training required to build a custom personal development plan to be effective for the role, will be provided.

As mentioned, the emphasis on working with public sector clients would benefit from having previously held Security Clearance (SC) status, however this is not mandatory. 

Examples of desirable skills, knowledge and experience

Our Solutions Engineers come from a wide range of backgrounds: IT, engineering, software development, product management, financial consulting, customer support & project delivery. We're serious about building a diverse team. When hiring we look for diversity of experience combined with genuine curiosity for our technology.

Ultimately, you are passionate about technology and have the ability to explain complex technical concepts in easy-to-understand terms. You are naturally curious, and an avid builder who is not afraid to get your hands dirty. You appreciate the diversity of challenges in working with customers, and look forward to helping them realise the full promise of Cloudflare. On the Solutions Engineering team, you will find a collaborative environment where everyone brings different strengths and jumps in to help each other.

You will have a good fundamental understanding on how to manage technical validation projects so that customers can have an informed opinion on the best solution to a given problem - with an eye on what could come next.

Additional experience might include a combination of the skills below:

• Showing up in the right-way: bringing a positive attitude, open-minded to new ideas and bringing your energy and ideas to help our clients and our team succeed. 
• 10+ years of experience in the IT industry (mid-level or senior engineering level experience).
• Ability to manage a project, work to deadlines, and prioritise between competing demands.
• Demonstrating empathy with customers and quickly identifying challenges and pain points they face. 
• Understanding of “how the internet works”. For example:
• Know the differences between TCP & UDP, and understand what kinds of applications may favour one over the other;
• Can explain the difference between authoritative DNS & recursive DNS?;
• You understand the role of a firewall, why TLS (SSL) plays an increasingly important role on today's Internet, a solid understanding of HTTP and a willingness to dive deeper into the quirks of clients & servers alike;
• Understanding of how customers make buying decisions, how to explain ROI.
• A knowledge of the competitive landscape for one or more of: DDoS, CDN, Performance, DNS, Developer platform or Zero-Trust/SASE service providers.
• You're OK with some in-region travel (15~30 days per quarter): eg. Being next to our clients means that we need to travel to customer offices, conferences and/or events.

Bonus!

• Previous experience in a pre-sales SE or consulting role. (note: doesn't have to be in tech);
• Demonstrated experience with a scripting language (e.g. Python, JavaScript, Bash) and a desire to expand those skills;
• Exposure to emerging technical landscape trends such as machine learning, GenAI, DevOps, security operations etc.