Data Center Operations Engineer

Job description

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. As a result, they see significant improvement in performance and a decrease in spam and other attacks. Cloudflare was named to Entrepreneur Magazine’s Top Company Cultures list and ranked among the World’s Most Innovative Companies by Fast Company. 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, while ensuring that every improvement, no matter how small, is shared across the team to lift everyone up. If you’re the type of person who values curiosity over bureaucracy, and that AI is a partner in solving tough problems to keep the Internet moving forward, you’ll fit right in. Available Locations: Boston, MA | Dallas, TX | Salt Lake City, UT  (This role requires you to be onsite 5 days a week in one of our locations) About the Department Infrastructure Operations builds and manages the data center infrastructure behind Cloudflare's global network. The organization brings together engineering, operations, hardware and logistics teams that plan, deploy, operate and maintain our footprint in hundreds of cities worldwide. In this role, you'll help extend that footprint with a new generation of data center sites across the United States. About the Role We're looking for Data Center Engineers to be the hands, eyes and judgment on the ground at our new sites. You'll work on-site every day at your home data center, helping bring it online and keeping its hardware healthy once it's in production. You'll rack, cable and replace equipment, troubleshoot servers and network gear well past a simple parts swap, and keep every asset accurately documented from the moment it arrives. You'll work alongside colocation staff, integrators and partner teams, and support other sites remotely when the team needs you. Experienced engineers will have room to act as the technical lead for their site, mentor others, and help set the standards the team uses everywhere. We're building these sites to run with less manual effort than traditional data centers. When something breaks, we expect you to fix it for good, not just for today, and to use AI and automation to make the fix stick, whether that means a better runbook, a script, or a change to how the team works. This role is hands-on at the physical layer: hardware, cabling, and Layer 1/Layer 2 connectivity. You'll use the command line to troubleshoot servers and Layer 2 network issues, but network configuration and server provisioning are owned by partner engineering teams. What You'll Do Site Builds • Support integrated site builds: receive and inspect hardware, rack and stack equipment, and run and dress structured cabling to standard. • Verify integrator and contractor work against build specifications, drive defects to resolution, and make sure sites are production-ready before handoff. Break/Fix and Troubleshooting • Triage and troubleshoot server hardware using BMC/IPMI, hardware logs, diagnostics and firmware tools. Find the root cause instead of swapping parts until something works. • Replace components and whole systems, including servers, switches and optics, safely and with minimal disruption. • Troubleshoot Layer 1 and Layer 2 issues: console into network devices, read interface and link state from the command line, inspect and clean optics, check light levels, and test fiber with a light meter or OTDR. On-Call and Incidents • Take part in an on-call rotation and respond on site to incidents affecting hardware at your data center. &