Senior Engineering Manager, AI Gateway

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: Austin, TX | Hybrid
What You'll Do
As the Engineering Manager for AI Gateway, you will lead a small, high-velocity team building that layer. This is a deeply hands-on role. You will be in the code, in the design docs, in customer conversations, and in the trenches with your team. We're looking for a generative builder who can move from half-formed idea to working prototype quickly, and bring a team along with that energy. We are obsessively agent-pilled. We don't just build the product; we build the environment that builds the product: the agents, harnesses, skills, tools, and context that let a small team ship like a much larger one. We dogfood AI Gateway, Workers AI, and the broader Cloudflare agent stack relentlessly, and we expect you to as well.
In This Role, You Will

• Set the technical and product direction for AI Gateway alongside engineers and PMs, then roll up your sleeves and help build it.
• Build the software and the software that builds the software. Your team needs to build the context and toolchain that let agents help build, operate, monitor, and improve AI Gateway itself.
• Inspire and energize a team shipping at the pace the AI ecosystem demands. Provider APIs change weekly, new models drop daily, and the gap between "good idea" and "in production" is measured in days, not quarters.
• Obsess over developer experience. Every error message, SDK choice, dashboard flow, and line of docs matters. You should have strong taste about what makes developer tools feel great.
• Recruit, mentor, and grow engineers. Build a small team that punches massively above its weight.
• Partner closely with Workers AI, Agents, and the broader Developer Platform teams to deliver a unified inference layer that feels like one product

Examples Of Desirable Skills, Knowledge And Experience

• A minimum of 8 years of relevant industry experience, including at least 4 years managing software engineering teams.
• Proven track record leading teams that have shipped and operated complex, large-scale systems, preferably in AI infrastructure, developer platforms, cloud infrastructure, edge/proxy systems, or high-scale APIs.
• Significant technical depth, with the ability to guide architectural discussions, make credible technical decisions, review designs, and unblock your team.
• Strong developer tools taste. You have used and built enough APIs, SDKs, dashboards, CLIs, and internal platforms to know what makes them delightful or painful.
• Demonstrated ability to hire, coach, and develop senior engineers, and to build high-performing, inclusive teams that ship. You care about teams and team culture.
• A hands-on approach to leadership: you consider yourself a builder, stay close to the code, know the numbers, know the customer, and know what to build next.

Bonus Points

• Experience building AI/ML infrastructure, inference platforms, model gateways, or LLM-powered applications.
• Experience building developer-facing APIs or SDKs at scale.
• Hands-on experience with proxy, edge, or gateway systems.
• You've built or heavily customized your own agentic dev environment: custom agents, harnesses, or tooling that changed how you ship.
• Familiarity with the current AI ecosystem: providers, model capabilities, agent frameworks, and where the rough edges are.
• A track record of writing publicly about developer tools or systems you've built.
• You've built something with AI Gateway, Workers AI, or a competing product, and have opinions about what's missing.

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!
Please note that applicants who progress to the offer stage of the interview process may be asked to attend an in-person interview within one of the Cloudflare Offices or Cloudflare Hubs. More details about this will be available at that stage of the interview process.
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 [email protected] or via mail at 101 Townsend St. San Francisco, CA 94107.