Lead Data Scientist at Cloudflare

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: Austin, TX - Hybrid About the team The Data Intelligence & Analytics organization builds the core data platform and internal products that power decision-making across the company. We design and operate large-scale data systems, own the company’s data lake, ingestion infrastructure, and platform tooling, and develop end-to-end applications that transform complex datasets into fast, reliable, business-critical products used daily by go-to-market, product, and engineering teams. Our work sits at the intersection of data platforms, distributed systems, and product development, giving engineers the opportunity to own meaningful problems across the stack and build systems that truly run the business. About the role You will focus on building scalable, reliable AI/ML models, services and GenAI powered application backends, partnering closely with data and full-stack engineers to deliver new features and operate the pipelines and platforms behind our products. Our stack spans multiple languages and technologies, including Python, React, and TypeScript, and continues to evolve. Many of our applications also incorporate strong AI components, giving you opportunities to work with modern AI infrastructure and tools such as vector databases, MCP-based services, and Workers AI. You will focus on building scalable, reliable services and application backends, partnering closely with data and full-stack engineers to deliver new features and operate the pipelines and platforms behind our products. Our stack spans multiple languages and technologies, including Python, React, and TypeScript, and continues to evolve. Many of our applications also incorporate strong AI components, giving you opportunities to work with modern AI infrastructure and tools such as vector databases, MCP-based services, and Workers AI. What you'll do • Partner and align with business leaders, stakeholders, product managers and internal teams to understand the business and product challenges and goals and address them using predictive analytics in a globally distributed environment. • Understand data landscape i.e tooling, tech stack, source systems etc. and work closely with the data engineering team to improve the data collection and quality. • Understand business/product strategy and high-level roadmap and align analysis efforts to enable them with data insights and help achieve their strategic goals. • Strong audience focused presentation and storytelling skills focused on key takeaways in a crisp and concise manner. • Define, implement, and train statistical, machine learning, deep learning and generative AI models. • Use software engineering best practices to publish model scores/insights/learnings at scale within the company. • Ability to define and spot macro and micro levels trends with statistical significance on a regular basis and understand key drivers driving those trends. • Active role in hiring, growing, and mentoring the data scientist team in Austin. Examples of desirable skills, knowledge and experience • M.S or Ph.D in Computer Science, Statistics, Mathematics, or other quantitative fields. • 5+ years of data scientist experience with proven industry experience in a large scale environment (PBs scale & globally distributed teams) • Strong experience working with business functions such as Finance, Sales, and Marketing to build models and drive impactful business outcomes (eg: customer and revenue growth) • 2+ years experience with a fast-growing SaaS business based company is preferred. • Strong experience in scientific computing using Python. • Experience with Spark, SQL, Tableau, Google Analytics, BigQuery (or any other Big data/Cloud equivalent) etc. • Experience working with and processing structured, unstructured, and semi-structured data. • Strong cross-functional collaboration experience with data engineering and data analysts teams within the function. • Proven track record of applying data insights and machine learning in order to address business needs and drive revenue. • Proficiency in large language models and the frameworks (Langchain, Langgraph, etc.) necessary for implementing GenAI applications, such as AI Agents, chatbots and related use cases. • Strong communication and presentation skills catered to different audiences within the company. • Capable of working closely with business, engineering, and product teams to ensure data initiatives are aligned with business needs. • Experience in hiring data scientists and establishing team best practices is preferred. 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 [Upgrade to PRO to see contact] or via mail at 101 Townsend St. San Francisco, CA 94107.