System Engineer, Cloudflare Hyperdrive - Cloudflare

About the Role

The Cloudflare Hyperdrive team builds the technology that makes regional databases feel global. Hyperdrive is a core piece of the Cloudflare Developer Platform that accelerates database queries from Cloudflare Workers by pooling connections and caching data at the edge. By eliminating the massive latency overhead of TCP, TLS, and database-specific handshakes, Hyperdrive allows developers to use databases like PostgreSQL and MySQL without the "cold start" performance penalties.

Responsibilities

Hyperdrive is integrated directly into the Cloudflare global network and features:

• Global Connection Pooling: Maintains "warm" connections to origin databases, reducing connection times by up to 90%.
• Intelligent Query Caching: Automatically caches frequently run read queries at the edge.
• Protocol-Aware Proxying: Custom-built implementations of database wire protocols (PostgreSQL and MySQL) to parse and optimize traffic in real-time.
• Seamless Integration: Works with existing ORMs and drivers.

You will own your code from inception to release, delivering solutions across the software stack. You will interact with languages including Rust, Go, C++, and TypeScript.

Desirable Skills, Knowledge, and Experience

• 4+ years of professional experience with Rust, Go, or C++.
• Ability to write code that respects CPU and memory constraints.
• Comfort with the Linux networking stack (TCP/IP, TLS, WebSockets).
• Deep understanding of database internals, including connection lifecycles, transaction states, and wire protocols.
• Experience debugging complex, distributed systems and building for high reliability.

Bonus Points

• Experience with PgBouncer, ProxySQL, or custom database middleware.
• Familiarity with the Cloudflare Workers ecosystem.
• Contributions to database drivers, ORMs, or low-level networking libraries.
• Experience using eBPF, perf, or other profiling tools to identify bottlenecks.