Principal Customer Engineer, Majors - 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.

At Cloudflare, we’re looking for 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.

Available Locations

• Germany

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 to eliminate administrative toil while focusing on high-value architectural design.

• 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. Address complex technical objections and security compliance questions.
• Customer Adoption & Value Realization: Provide oversight to technical onboarding and implementation, acting as the primary executive and engineering contact. Design structured migration and onboarding blueprints (e.g., DNS migrations, Zero Trust rollouts, WAF tuning). Partner with Account Executives to own discovery, demos, onboarding, technical health, risk, and expansion strategy.
• Commercial Accountability & Expansion: Carry a variable quota tied directly to new business acquisition and account growth. Ensure platform adoption, retain revenue, and identify strategic cross-sell and up-sell opportunities using product usage data. Lead technical Quarterly Business Reviews (QBRs) for C-level executives.
• Trusted Advisory: Maintain deep continuous relationships with key stakeholders throughout the entire customer lifecycle. Provide thought partnership on architecture, AI control layers, security posture, and deployment confidence.
• AI Orchestration & Workflow Automation: Leverage AI agents, Large Language Models (LLMs), and internal platforms to automate routine tasks such as RFP/Security Questionnaire responses, sandbox provisioning, and telemetry monitoring.
• Education & Enablement: Partner with Enablement Teams to design, build, and govern technical resources. Define, document, and educate internal teams and customers on Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs), architectural best practices, and technical guides.
• Travel Requirements: Travel up to 20–50% for customer meetings, conferences, industry events, and in-person team collaboration.

Desirable Skills, Knowledge, and Experience

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

Bonus Points

• Technical Enablement: Experience creating technical workshops, code samples, documentation, or developer onboarding guides.
• Applied AI Knowledge: Experience with LLM orchestration, Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) architectures, and model-access controls.
• Regulatory Knowledge: Understanding of PCI DSS, HIPAA, SOC 2, or similar standards.
• Hyperscaler / Digital Native Background: Prior experience at hyperscalers, digital natives, distributed systems environments, or high-growth startups.

Compensation & Benefits

• Compensation: Estimated annual base and incentive target compensation for Germany-based hires ranges between €148,000 - €204,000 (includes sales incentive plan target).
• Equity: Eligible to participate in Cloudflare's equity plan.