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Salary: USD 212,000 - 336,000 / annual
Cloudflare is seeking a Principal Partner Engineer to serve as a strategic technical sales leader responsible for the end-to-end technical lifecycle and enablement of assigned partners across the Southeast Territory (Miami FL, Atlanta GA, Charlotte NC, Raleigh NC). This is a high-impact role combining pre-sales and post-sales engineering activities, positioning you as the trusted technical advisor for partner organizations.
You will drive value-based solution selling to accelerate adoption of the Cloudflare platform, with particular focus on Cloudflare One (SASE/SSE) and AI Infrastructure (Workers AI / AI Gateway). Key responsibilities include:
**Pre-Sales Engineering & Champion Building:**
- Own technical relationships with partners to align on joint Go-To-Market strategies
- Build and accelerate partner technical capabilities, enabling independent delivery of scalable solutions
- Own end-to-end Technical Account Plans (TAP) for strategic partners, mapping business goals to technical execution milestones
- Identify and cultivate technical champions within partner organizations to generate Partner-Influenced Opportunities (PIO)
- Collaborate with sales teams to source, qualify, and expand PIO through strategic architectural alignment
- Enable partners' technical validation, PoC, demo, and pipeline generation capabilities
**Accelerate Services Delivery:**
- Own the Advanced Services Delivery (ASD) partner journey to ensure partners can deploy, manage, and support Cloudflare platform and AI workloads
- Build and co-develop joint services catalogues, accelerating launch of Cloudflare-focused services offerings and managed CF1 SASE practices
- Enable partners to embed CF1 and Workers AI capabilities into their managed security portfolios
- Develop and track KPIs to measure effectiveness of partner service deliveries
- Act as escalated technical point of contact for long-term architectural health
**Automation, AI & Continuous Innovation:**
- Champion use of Cloudflare OS and AI tools (Agent PAT and Agent Echo) to automate repeatable technical tasks
- Engage partner champions in the Partner Technical Advisory Council (PTAC) for early access to beta software and co-innovation
- Participate in cross-training programs to maintain proficiency across Cloudflare One and AI ecosystem
**Requirements:**
- 8+ years of technical, partner-facing experience (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 with ability to manage complex projects with multiple stakeholders
- Demonstrated ability to manage technical lifecycle of deals from pre-sales discovery through post-sale service delivery
- Strong communication skills with 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
