Engineering Manager - Workers Runtime, Edge Team

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.

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. We hire the best people based on an evaluation of their potential and support them throughout their time at Cloudflare. Come join us!

Available Locations: Austin | Lisbon | London (Hybrid)

About The Department

Emerging Technologies & Incubation (ETI) is where new and bold products are built and released within Cloudflare. Rather than being constrained by the structures which make Cloudflare a massively successful business, we are able to leverage them to deliver entirely new tools and products to our customers. Cloudflare’s edge and network make it possible to solve problems at massive scale and efficiency which would be impossible for almost any other organization.

About The Team

The Workers Runtime team delivers features and improvements to our Runtime which actually executes customer code at the edge. We care deeply about increasing performance, improving JS API surface area and compiled language support through WebAssembly, and optimizing to meet the next 10x increase in scale. The Runtime is a hostile environment - System resources such as memory, cpu, I/O, etc need to be managed extremely carefully and security must be foundational in everything we do.

Our work is deeply systems-oriented. We build and maintain the C++ and Rust codebase that embeds the JavaScript engine, manages isolate lifecycles, enforces resource limits (CPU, memory, I/O), and orchestrates how customer scripts are loaded, cached, and executed. We operate in a hostile multi-tenant environment where security must be foundational — from side-channel attack mitigations to isolate sandboxing — and performance is measured in microseconds.

What You'll Do

We are looking for an Engineering Manager to lead the Workers Runtime - Edge team. You will own the team that keeps our runtime service running in production across Cloudflare's entire fleet and drives the architectural evolution of the platform.

You Will

Lead a team of senior systems engineers working in C++ and Rust on one of the most performance-critical and security-sensitive services at Cloudflare.

Drive major infrastructure initiatives — migrating legacy systems, redesigning core abstractions, and laying the groundwork for next-generation runtime architecture that will define the platform for years to come.

Own reliability and release safety for a service handling tens of millions of requests per second. You will improve release processes, invest in health monitoring and automated rollback, and ensure the team can ship changes confidently at scale.

Make hard prioritisation calls between new feature work that unblocks customers and the ongoing investment in foundations, security, and developer velocity that the team needs to stay healthy long-term.

Partner closely with adjacent teams across the Developer Platform to ensure the runtime supports the broader product roadmap — including compute, storage, networking, and observability teams.

Grow and develop the team Hire strong systems engineers, set clear expectations, provide technical mentorship, and create an environment where people do their best work.

You bring a track record of leading teams that operate large-scale, low-latency distributed systems. You understand how to balance the urgency of production with the patience required for foundational improvement. You are technically credible enough to evaluate architectural proposals, weigh tradeoffs in C++/Rust systems, and earn the respect of a deeply technical team — while being a strong enough manager to build a healthy, high-performing engineering culture.

Examples of desirable skills, knowledge and experience

Experience Leading A Team

Comfortable leading and hiring a team that builds low level distributed systems.

Excel at planning, creating teams and overseeing execution to meet commitments and deliver with predictability

Comfortable building developer-loved APIs that scale

Demonstrate a track record of leading a team including hiring, on-boarding, and professional development. You inspire your team to reach higher. You’re as good as explaining “why” as you are “how”

Experience Implementing Tools, Process, Internal Instrumentation, Methodologies And Resolving Blockages

At least 4 years of recent professional experience with C++ or Rust.

Solid understanding of computer science fundamentals including data structures, algorithms, and object-oriented or functional design.

Deep understanding of the web and technologies such as web browsers, HTTP, JavaScript and WebAssembly

Strong understanding of Linux systems programming, process models, and networking.

Bonus Points

Experience Building High Performance Distributed Systems.

Experience Working With Cloud Platforms, Especially Server-less Platforms.

Experience With The Internals Of Js Engines Such As V8, Spidermonkey, Or Javascriptcore

Experience With Standalone Webassembly Runtimes Such As Wasmtime, Wasmer, Lucet, Etc

Deep Linux/UNIX systems, kernel, or networking knowledge

Contributions to large open source projects

Experience working in low-latency real time environments such as game streaming, game engine architecture, high frequency trading, payment systems.

Experience Debugging, Optimizing And Identifying Failure Modes In a Large-scale Linux-based Distributed System.

Compensation

Compensation May Be Adjusted Depending On Work Location.

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

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!

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