Principal Partner Engineer - 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. Internet properties powered by Cloudflare all have web traffic routed through its intelligent global network, which gets smarter with every request.

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.

Available Locations: Miami FL, Atlanta GA, Charlotte NC, Raleigh NC (Southeast Territory)

Role Overview

The Partner Engineer (PE) is a high-impact, strategic technical sales leader responsible for end-to-end technical lifecycle and enablement of assigned partners, managing both pre-sales and post-sales engineering activities. In this role, you will act as the single technical point of contact and trusted advisor for your assigned partners, driving technical validation during the sales cycle, architecting their delivery readiness, and ensuring ongoing Partner Success.

The role focuses heavily on driving value-based solution selling to accelerate adoption of the Cloudflare platform with a focus on Cloudflare One (SASE/SSE) and AI Infrastructure (Workers AI / AI Gateway). By cultivating deeply technical champions within partner organizations, aligning architectures to tangible business outcomes, optimizing post-sales delivery, and building joint managed services offerings, you will directly expand and influence the pipeline to maximize Partner-Influenced Opportunity (PIO) revenue.

Key Responsibilities

1. Pre-Sales Engineering & Champion Building

• Technical Alignment, Discovery & Enablement: Own the technical relationship with Partners to align on building joint Go-To-Market (GTM) strategies. Align, build, and accelerate partner technical capabilities to lead deep technical discovery and architectural design independently leveraging Cloudflare One (CF1) and AI.
• Technical Account Plan Ownership: Own and drive the end-to-end Technical Account Plan (TAP) for assigned strategic partners. Act as the primary architect mapping partner business goals to technical execution milestones.
• Building Technical Champions: Identify, enable, and cultivate key technical advocates and "Champions" within partner organizations to scale Cloudflare expertise independently and empower them to deliver high-value professional services around Zero Trust and AI application security.
• Driving PIO via Next-Gen Architectures: Proactively source, qualify, and expand Partner-Influenced Opportunities through strategic architectural alignment, focusing on migrating legacy network architectures to CF1 and integrating secure AI solutions.
• Deal Support & Qualification: Enable partners' technical validation, proof-of-concept (PoC), demo, pipeline generation, and pipeline acceleration capabilities.

2. Accelerate Services Delivery

• ASD Partner Journey Ownership: Own the Accelerate Services Delivery (ASD) partner journey to ensure partners possess advanced capabilities required to deploy, manage, and support the Cloudflare platform and AI application workloads.
• Joint Services Offering Acceleration: Build and co-develop joint services catalogues with key partners, accelerating the creation and launch of managed CF1 SASE practices and AI security assessments.
• Service Monetization & Performance Metrics: Enable partners to embed CF1 and Workers AI capabilities into their managed security portfolios. Track key performance indicators (KPIs) to improve service delivery effectiveness.
• Technical Account Management & Architectural Health: Act as the escalated technical point of contact to ensure long-term architectural health.

3. Automation, AI Agents & Continuous Innovation

• Leverage Autonomous AI Tools: Champion the use of Cloudflare OS and AI tools (Agent PAT and Agent Echo) to automate standard, repeatable technical tasks.
• AI & CF1 Product Enhancement Feedback Loop: Engage partner champions in the Partner Technical Advisory Council (PTAC) to provide early beta access, capture product feedback, and drive joint co-innovation.
• Cross-Functional Enablement: Maintain peak proficiency across pre-sales scoping and post-sales service deployment across the Cloudflare One and AI ecosystem.

Required Qualifications & Experience

• 8+ years of technical, partner-facing experience (e.g., Systems Engineer, Solutions Architect, or Technical Account Manager) in cybersecurity, cloud infrastructure, or networking.
• Strong technical depth in Cloudflare One (CF1) or equivalent SASE/SSE architectures, Zero Trust, DNS, and application security.
• Hands-on familiarity with AI deployment, AI Gateway, LLM orchestration frameworks, or vector databases.
• Proven track record of developing technical talent or building "champion" programs within partner organizations.
• Deep understanding of enterprise IT, multi-cloud, and hybrid cloud environments while managing complex multi-stakeholder projects.
• Demonstrated ability to manage the technical lifecycle of a deal from initial pre-sales discovery through post-sale service delivery.
• Strong communication skills with a track record of presenting complex CF1 architectures and AI-driven use cases to partner leadership and technical teams.
• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or equivalent practical experience.

Compensation & Benefits

• Annual Salary Range: $212,000 - $336,000 (varies based on geographic location and includes on-target incentive compensation under Cloudflare's Sales Compensation Plan).
• Equity: Eligible to participate in Cloudflare’s equity plan and Employee Stock Purchase Plan (ESPP).
• Health & Welfare: Comprehensive Medical, Dental, and Vision insurance, Flexible Spending Accounts, Fertility & Family Forming benefits, and on-demand mental health support.
• Financial Benefits: 401(k) Retirement Savings Plan, Short/Long Term Disability, and Life & Accident Insurance.
• Time Off: Flexible paid time off covering vacation and sick leave, plus parental, pregnancy health, medical, and bereavement leave.

What Makes Cloudflare Special?

Fundamental to our mission to help build a better Internet is protecting the free and open Internet through initiatives like:

• Project Galileo: Equipping journalism and civil society organizations with enterprise-grade defense tools at no cost.
• Athenian Project: Protecting state and local election infrastructure against online attacks.
• 1.1.1.1: Providing a fast, privacy-centric public DNS resolver built for public trust.