Engineering Manager, Linux Team

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. 

We realize people do not fit into neat boxes. We are looking for curious and empathetic individuals who are committed to developing themselves and learning new skills, and we are ready to help you do that. We cannot complete our mission without building a diverse and inclusive team. We hire the best people based on an evaluation of their potential and support them throughout their time at Cloudflare. Come join us! 

Available Locations: London, UK

What You’ll Do

• Lead and Mentor: Manage a high-performing team of kernel and systems engineers, fostering a culture of "collaboration-first" and continuous knowledge sharing both internally and with the global open-source community.
• Own the OS Lifecycle: Oversee the end-to-end delivery of the Linux Kernel and core OS components. Your goal is a fully automated continuous delivery pipeline that moves from merge to 100% production in less than 30 days.
• Drive Technical Vision: Steer the Cloudflare kernel development roadmap. You will balance the need for cutting-edge features with the absolute requirements of production stability, security, and performance.
• Upstream Advocacy: Promote a "minimal patch" philosophy by ensuring your team is a top contributor to the Linux Kernel. You will support engineers in becoming upstream maintainers for critical subsystems.
• Cross-Functional Collaboration: Act as a consultant to hardware and service teams, helping them onboard new hardware and optimize workloads for our OS. You’ll lead a "virtual team" environment where any engineer at Cloudflare can contribute to the kernel.
• Innovate Debugging: Tackle the "impossible" challenges of kernel-level debugging. You will lead the development of automated systems that collect critical telemetry when a system crashes, even when traditional debuggers cannot run.
• Measure Success: Use DORA metrics and team-specific capabilities - such as the "time to fix a kernel issue" and upstream commit volume - to track and improve team impact.

What You’ll Bring

• Systems Leadership: 5+ years of experience managing engineering teams, ideally in low-level systems, kernel development, or large-scale infrastructure environments.
• Low-Level Expertise: A deep understanding of Linux Kernel internals, x86/ARM architecture, and OS design fundamentals. You should be comfortable discussing memory management, schedulers, and network stacks.
• Automation Mindset: Experience building or managing CI/CD pipelines for foundational software. You believe that "toil" is a bug and automation is the feature.
• Open Source Pedigree: A proven track record of engaging with the open-source community. You understand the nuances of upstreaming and how to navigate community dynamics effectively.
• Operational Empathy: An understanding of the unique challenges of a global "reboot-limited" production environment. You prioritize stability and have experience with pre-production QA and synthetic workload evaluation.
• Strategic Communication: The ability to translate complex kernel-level obstacles into actionable business insights for stakeholders across the company.
• Resilience: You aren't intimidated by the "impossible." Whether it's a non-reproducible race condition or an unwelcoming upstream thread, you lead your team through the challenge with a pragmatic, solution-oriented mindset.

What Makes Cloudflare Special?

We’re not just a highly ambitious, large-scale technology company. We’re a highly ambitious, large-scale technology company with a soul. Fundamental to our mission to help build a better Internet is protecting the free and open Internet.

Project Galileo: Since 2014, we've equipped more than 2,400 journalism and civil society organizations in 111 countries with powerful tools to defend themselves against attacks that would otherwise censor their work, technology already used by Cloudflare’s enterprise customers--at no cost.

Athenian Project: In 2017, we created the Athenian Project to ensure that state and local governments have the highest level of protection and reliability for free, so that their constituents have access to election information and voter registration. Since the project, we've provided services to more than 425 local government election websites in 33 states.

1.1.1.1: We released 1.1.1.1 to help fix the foundation of the Internet by building a faster, more secure and privacy-centric public DNS resolver. This is available publicly for everyone to use - it is the first consumer-focused service Cloudflare has ever released. Here’s the deal - we don’t store client IP addresses never, ever. We will continue to abide by our privacy commitment and ensure that no user data is sold to advertisers or used to target consumers.

Sound like something you’d like to be a part of? We’d love to hear from you!

This position may require access to information protected under U.S. export control laws, including the U.S. Export Administration Regulations. Please note that any offer of employment may be conditioned on your authorization to receive software or technology controlled under these U.S. export laws without sponsorship for an export license.

Cloudflare is proud to be an equal opportunity employer.  We are committed to providing equal employment opportunity for all people and place great value in both diversity and inclusiveness.  All qualified applicants will be considered for employment without regard to their, or any other person's, perceived or actual race, color, religion, sex, gender, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, national origin, ancestry, citizenship, age, physical or mental disability, medical condition, family care status, or any other basis protected by law. We are an AA/Veterans/Disabled Employer.

Cloudflare provides reasonable accommodations to qualified individuals with disabilities.  Please tell us if you require a reasonable accommodation to apply for a job. Examples of reasonable accommodations include, but are not limited to, changing the application process, providing documents in an alternate format, using a sign language interpreter, or using specialized equipment.  If you require a reasonable accommodation to apply for a job, please contact us via e-mail at hr@cloudflare.com or via mail at 101 Townsend St. San Francisco, CA 94107.