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Salary: EUR 66,000 - 91,000 / annual
Cloudflare is seeking a Senior Systems Engineer to lead the design, delivery, and operation of distributed systems powering MCP Server Portals—a platform that gives organizations a secure, centralized way to connect AI agents to internal and third-party tools.
In this role, you will own the architecture and implementation of globally distributed services that authenticate users, manage OAuth credentials and sessions, enforce Zero Trust policies, and proxy MCP traffic across Cloudflare's global network. You will lead complex projects across service boundaries, make architectural tradeoffs for your area, and mentor other engineers to deliver reliable, secure changes.
Key responsibilities include:
- Leading design, implementation, and operation of globally distributed services connecting MCP clients to authorized upstream MCP servers
- Owning complex features and service improvements from problem definition through implementation, rollout, observability, and production support
- Shaping technical decisions for MCP Portals, including service boundaries, security controls, compatibility, and reliability/latency/resource tradeoffs
- Evolving the implementation as the MCP specification changes, planning safe migrations for existing customers
- Designing and reviewing authentication and authorization flows involving Cloudflare Access, OAuth, identity, and credential handling
- Improving reliability and scalability of multi-tenant systems built on the Cloudflare Developer Platform
- Strengthening observability through structured logs, metrics, traces, dashboards, and alerts; participating in production support and incident response
- Leading investigations of complex customer issues across services and teams, identifying root causes, and driving preventative fixes
- Reviewing designs and code, mentoring engineers, and raising quality standards for testing, deployment, and operations
- Partnering with product, security, and engineering teams to turn customer needs into maintainable product capabilities
You will work closely with engineers and product managers across Access, Gateway, and Developer Platform teams as the protocol and product evolve. This is a hands-on role requiring clarity in solving ambiguous systems problems and taking responsibility for production outcomes.
REQUIREMENTS:
Must Have:
- 6+ years of experience building and operating distributed systems, backend services, network services, or infrastructure products in production
- Demonstrated ownership of complex production services or projects, including architecture, implementation, rollout, and operational outcomes
- Strong programming skills in TypeScript, JavaScript, Go, Rust, C++, or another language used to build production services
- Deep understanding of HTTP, APIs, proxies, streaming connections, and distributed-systems failure modes
- Experience with authentication and authorization technologies such as OAuth 2.0, OpenID Connect, JWTs, PKCE, or policy-based access control
- Experience designing or operating security-sensitive systems, with sound judgment about identity, authorization, credential handling, concurrency, and state management
- Ability to diagnose difficult production issues using logs, metrics, traces, error reporting, and customer-provided evidence, then drive durable fixes
- Experience making backward-compatible changes to live systems and managing the risks of deployment and migration
- Clear written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to explain technical tradeoffs, influence decisions across teams, and mentor other engineers
Nice to Have:
- Experience with the Model Context Protocol
- Familiarity with the Cloudflare Developer Platform or other serverless edge-computing platforms
- Experience building gateways, forward proxies, identity systems, developer platforms, or Zero Trust and data loss prevention products
