Solutions Strategy Lead

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.

Available Location:  Cincinnati, OH

About Solutions Engineering At Cloudflare

The Pre-Sales Solution Engineering organization owns the technical sale of the Cloudflare solution portfolio, ensuring maximal business value, fit-for-purpose solution design and adoption roadmap for our customers. Solutions Engineering is made up of individuals from a wide range of backgrounds - from Financial Consulting to Product Management, Customer Support to Software Engineering, and we are serious about building a diverse, experienced and curious team.

What You'll Do As A Solution Strategy Lead

Strategic accounts require dedicated focus to scale with Cloudflare. Client Directors manage commercial relationships, negotiations, and quota attainment alongside solution engineers whose main focus is presales. This role extends both their capacity by becoming a trusted advisor dedicated to 1 or tops 5 accounts and taking a consultative approach to understanding the entire customer environment and driving transformation and adoption by coordinating cross-functional resources; this is not a hands on keyboard role but can drive those engagements as needed.

Platform Focus Areas

Helps Accelerate Adoption Across Three Platform Areas With Equal Priority

App Modernization

Scope

Migration from legacy application architectures to Cloudflare's edge platform. Includes moving workloads from on-premise or hyperscaler compute to Workers, consolidating storage on R2, and modernizing data layers with D1 and Durable Objects, all while considering security posture.

Stakeholders

VP Engineering, Platform Architects, Infrastructure leads, CISO

Developer

Scope

Adoption of Cloudflare's developer platform for new application development. Workers, Workers KV, Pages, Queues, Durable Objects, R2, D1. Positioning Cloudflare as the compute and storage layer for net-new projects.

Stakeholders

VP Engineering, Developer Experience leads, Platform teams

AI

Scope

Adoption of Cloudflare's AI infrastructure for inference and orchestration. Workers AI, Vectorize, AI Gateway. Positioning Cloudflare as the AI inference layer at the edge.

Stakeholders

CTO, Head of AI/ML, Data Platform leads

Core Accountabilities

Accountability

Description

Platform Adoption Road Mapping

Develop account-specific adoption plans across App Modernization, Developer, and AI. Map customer workloads to Cloudflare capabilities. Define sequencing and milestones.

Cross-Functional Coordination

Coordinate SE, CS, and Product resources against adoption milestones. Run account team operating rhythm. Ensure internal alignment on customer priorities.

Technical Executive Relationships

Build relationships with CTOs, VPs of Engineering, and Platform Architects. Engage technical decision-makers on platform strategy. CD retains procurement and CFO relationships.

Expansion Development

Identify and qualify platform expansion opportunities. Hand off to CD when commercial-ready. This individual builds the case; CD closes the deal.

Voice of Customer to Product

Bring strategic customer requirements into Product roadmap discussions. Provide quarterly briefings on adoption patterns, blockers, and feature needs.

Success Metrics

Platform Adoption

Products per account: Number of Cloudflare products in production per strategic account

Developer platform adoption: Strategic accounts with Workers, R2, or D1 in production

AI adoption: Strategic accounts with Workers AI or AI Gateway in production

Revenue Influence

Expansion pipeline: Dollar value of platform expansion opportunities developed and handed to CD

Net Revenue Retention: NRR on strategic account portfolio (shared metric with CD)

Product Feedback

Requirements Submitted: Strategic Customer Requirements Brought To Product Quarterly

Adoption blockers resolved: Product or engineering issues addressed that were blocking adoption

Customer-Facing Positioning

To customer executives, this role helps them realize value from Cloudflare's entire platform:

An expert and trusted advisor; peer to their architects and technical leads

Focused on Platform adoption and business outcomes, not transactions

Turns platform capabilities into production workloads and business value

The Profile

Architectural Command

10+ years of experience in Solution Engineering Leadership, Product Management, Consulting, or Technical Strategy within a global SaaS or infrastructure environment.

Executive Presence

Exceptional communication skills with the ability to influence C-level executives and internal product leads simultaneously.

Relentless Curiosity

A natural obsession with "How it works" and "How it could be better." You are driven to discover the architectural truth behind every customer challenge.

Bias For Action

You don't just identify problems; you build the "Formation" to solve them. You are comfortable in high-pressure, ambiguous environments.

Desirable skills, knowledge and experience

7+ years of deployment experience in similar role or experience in a technical leadership role

Previous experience as a solution engineer leader, consultant or technical marketing engineer building, architecting or deploying security solutions

Good understanding of AI, security challenges and its applicability to today’s enterprise landscape

Proven track record using AI to help drive revenue.

Strong knowledge of Security Architecture, Design and Operations

Working knowledge of the broader threat landscape and the ability to distill technology trends, and explain complex behaviors in simple terms

Proven experience working with customers and partners in successful design and deployment of solutions

Ability to juggle and successfully drive projects with customers, prospects, and partners.

Experience With Cloud Computing Solutions Implementations Including Microsoft 365, Azure, Google, Aws.

Compensation

This role is eligible to earn incentive compensation under Cloudflare’s Sales Compensation Plan. The estimated annual salary range includes the on-target incentive compensation that may be attained in this role under the Sales Compensation Plan.

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 o