Principal Customer Engineer, Digital Natives - Cloudflare

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.

We value builders who see the cracks in the Internet that everyone else has simply learned to live with. Our culture is built on iteration, leveraging AI to ship faster, and sharing improvements across the team. If you value curiosity over bureaucracy and see AI as a partner in solving tough technical challenges, you will fit right in.

Location

• Germany (Remote)

Responsibilities

The Customer Engineer (CE) is the core driver of our technical go-to-market strategy: a trusted technical advisor and primary architect of the customer journey. Sitting within the GTM organization and reporting to a Customer Engineering Leader, you will operate as a quota-carrying technologist leveraging AI-augmented workflows.

• Technical Validation: Partner closely with Account Executives to lead technical deep-dive discovery, capture business requirements, and map complex customer infrastructure (DNS, CDN, Zero Trust, Network Security, Workers) to Cloudflare architectures. Define, scope, and execute Proof of Concepts (PoCs) and technical evaluations.
• Customer Adoption & Value Realization: Provide oversight for technical onboarding and implementation as the primary executive and engineering contact. Design structured migration and onboarding blueprints (e.g., DNS migrations, Zero Trust rollouts, WAF tuning guidance) and mentor customer engineering teams on configuration best practices.
• Commercial Accountability & Expansion: Carry a variable quota tied directly to new business acquisition and ongoing account growth. Ensure deep platform adoption, retain revenue, and identify strategic cross-sell and up-sell opportunities based on usage data. Lead technical Quarterly Business Reviews (QBRs) for C-level executives.
• Trusted Advisory: Maintain continuous, deep relationships with key stakeholders throughout the lifecycle. Provide thought partnership on architecture, AI control layers, security posture, and deployment risk mitigation.
• AI Orchestration & Workflow Automation: Leverage AI agents, LLMs, and internal platforms to automate routine tasks such as RFP responses, sandbox provisioning, telemetry monitoring, and documentation.
• Education & Enablement: Partner with Enablement Teams to build technical resources, Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs), architectural best practices, and guides.
• Travel: Travel up to 20–50% to attend customer meetings, conferences, industry events, and in-person team collaboration.

Qualifications & Skills

• Experience: Demonstrated experience in a customer-facing technical role such as Solutions Engineering, Customer Engineering, Professional Services, Sales Engineering, Technical Account Management, or Forward Deployed Engineering.
• Architectural Mindset: Ability to design, whiteboard, and articulate complex enterprise network and security architectures clearly.
• Consultative & Commercial Mindset: Excellent communication skills to translate technical concepts into business outcomes in a quota-carrying or revenue-aligned environment.
• Language: Business fluency in German and English.
• Technical Depth: Expertise in at least four of the following domains:
  • Internet Fundamentals: OSI Model layers 1–7, BGP, GRE, TCP/UDP, DNS, HTTP(S), SSL/TLS.
  • Security: WAF, Bot Management, Firewalls, Rate Limiting, (M)TLS, Zero Trust, SASE.
  • Performance: Speed, latency, caching, video streaming, HTTP/2, TLS 1.3.
  • AI Proficiency: Prompt engineering, AI-assisted scripting, log analysis, LLMs, workflow automation.
  • Coding/Scripting: Python, JavaScript, Bash, Lua, Go, or similar languages for API connectors and edge computing.
  • Developer Platform: RESTful/GraphQL APIs, SDKs, webhooks, Infrastructure-as-Code (Terraform, Pulumi), CI/CD, observability.

Bonus Points

• Track record of creating and delivering technical enablement (workshops, code samples, documentation).
• Experience with LLM orchestration, RAG architectures, and model-access controls.
• Understanding of regulatory compliance frameworks (PCI DSS, HIPAA, SOC 2).
• Background in hyperscalers, digital natives, distributed systems, or high-growth startups.

Compensation & Benefits

• Estimated Annual Salary (Germany): €148,000 - €204,000 (includes on-target incentive compensation under Cloudflare's Sales Compensation Plan).
• Equity: Eligible to participate in Cloudflare's equity plan.