Incident Response Engineer

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

Role Summary

Team Mission

The Security Response Team’s mission is to systematically respond to security threats safeguarding Cloudflare. We operate 24/7 across the globe to respond to security incidents, continuously improve our response capabilities, lead digital investigations and enhance our overall security posture. Our “Cloudflare on Cloudflare”, data and automation first philosophy makes us a cohesive team with high impact.

The Role

This intermediate role on the Security Response Team focuses on refining security processes and leading critical incidents—from threat detection and cyber-attack analysis to containment and forensics. This role collaborates with IT, Engineering, Product, and Legal teams to build scalable response frameworks, leveraging expertise in tooling, automation, custom log analysis, and SIEM systems. Additionally, it requires effective communication of technical topics based on business requirements and participation in a shared on-call rotation with rotating weekend and holiday shifts.

Responsibilities

Security Operations

• Oversee security event triage, validation, and response workflows, ensuring timely investigation of high-priority alerts and security anomalies.
• Collaborate with detection engineers and threat intelligence teams to refine investigative signals and improve security visibility.
• Maintain incident management processes, ensuring incidents are properly categorized, documented, and escalated as needed.
• Perform continuous operational improvements, such as tuning detection rules, optimizing log ingestion, and enhancing alert enrichment pipelines.
• Conduct security gap analysis, identifying weaknesses in monitoring coverage and recommending solutions to enhance detection and response capabilities.
• Work closely with engineering and infrastructure teams to improve log collection, normalization, and visibility across diverse environments.
• Ensure adherence to incident response playbooks, compliance standards, and security best practices (e.g., CISA, GDPR, NIST, ISO 27001).

Incident Investigation & Threat Hunting

• Lead forensic investigations into intrusions, insider threats, APTs, and account compromises.
• Perform log analysis, correlation, and anomaly detection across endpoint, network, and cloud telemetry.
• Use Python, SQL, and data engineering techniques to extract insights from large-scale logs, identifying attacker TTPs and movement across environments.
• Investigate real-time security incidents, working closely with detection teams to validate alerts and escalate threats.
• Conduct post-incident analysis to determine root causes, document findings, and recommend mitigation strategies.

Security Monitoring & Continuous Threat Analysis

• Oversee security monitoring operations, ensuring alert triage, enrichment, and validation align with investigative workflows.
• Optimize SIEM queries, log ingestion pipelines, and case management systems to improve threat visibility.
• Develop playbooks and workflows to streamline investigations and reduce manual effort in repetitive tasks.
• Maintain Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) for effective response to security alerts and ongoing monitoring.
• Collaborate with the Detection Engineering team to refine detection rules and investigative signals based on real-world attack patterns.

Security Engineering & Automation for Investigations

• Engineer automated solutions to enhance investigation efficiency, such as log parsing scripts, data enrichment tools, and case correlation frameworks.
• Build log analysis pipelines for efficient parsing, enrichment, and correlation of multi-source security data.
• Develop custom detection logic for brute-force attempts, lateral movement, and anomaly-based intrusion detection.
• Automate threat intelligence enrichment, real-time event processing, and security data visualization.
• Engineer scalable solutions for PCAP analysis, network flow monitoring, and cloud security event detection.

Forensic Analysis & Threat Intelligence Correlation

• Perform disk, memory, and network forensics to uncover hidden indicators of compromise (IOCs) and attacker behaviors.
• Correlate multi-source logs (firewall, EDR, web, authentication logs, cloud telemetry) to reconstruct attack chains and identify attacker footholds.
• Analyze network traffic (PCAP, NetFlow, proxy logs) to detect exfiltration attempts, lateral movement, and suspicious patterns.
• Use threat intelligence APIs (e.g., VirusTotal, AbuseIPDB) to enrich investigations and automate IOC processing.

Must-Have Qualifications

• 3+ years of experience in incident response, security operations, and forensic analysis.
• Proven ability to lead crisis situations, make data-driven security decisions, and drive technical and operational improvements.
• Strong expertise in incident management, root cause analysis, and forensic investigation methodologies.
• Hands-on experience with SIEM (SQL, ELK, etc), SOAR, and EDR (CrowdStrike,) for real-time security monitoring and response.
• Expertise in cloud security (AWS, GCP, Azure) and containerized workloads (Kubernetes, Docker) security incident handling.
• Experience managing large-scale security incidents, ensuring effective escalation, resolution, and business alignment.
• Proficiency in OKR methodologies, Agile workflows, and project prioritization strategies.
• Strong understanding of threat intelligence, attacker tactics (MITRE ATT&CK), and real-world attack chains.

Nice-to-Have Qualifications

• Certifications: GCFA, GNFA, GREM, GCIH, or equivalent forensic/security certifications.
• Familiarity with SOAR platforms and security case management automation.
• Experience in Red Teaming, Threat Intelligence, or Malware Analysis.
• Understanding of cloud-native security monitoring (AWS, GCP, Azure).
  Compensation
• For Texas based hires: Estimated annual salary of $98,000-$120,000.

  Equity

  This role is eligible to participate in Cloudflare’s equity plan.

  • • Benefits

      Cloudflare offers a complete package of benefits and programs to support you and your family. Our benefits programs can help you pay health care expenses, support caregiving, build capital for the future and make life a little easier and fun The below is a description of our benefits for employees in the United States, and benefits may vary for employees based outside the U.S.

      Health & Welfare Benefits

      • Medical/Rx Insurance
      • Dental Insurance
      • Vision Insurance
      • Flexible Spending Accounts
      • Commuter Spending Accounts
      • Fertility & Family Forming Benefits
      • On-demand mental health support and Employee Assistance Program
      • Global Travel Medical Insurance

      Financial Benefits

      • Short and Long Term Disability Insurance
      • Life & Accident Insurance
      • 401(k) Retirement Savings Plan
      • Employee Stock Participation Plan

      Time Off

      • Flexible paid time off covering vacation and sick leave
      • Leave programs, including parental, pregnancy health, medical, and bereavement leave

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 or via mail at 101 Townsend St. San Francisco, CA 94107.