Multigenerational Leadership: Manage and mentor a diverse team of Junior, Mid, Senior, and Principal Researchers. You will tailor your management style to support early-career growth while providing high-level strategic partnership to industry-leading Principal scientists.
Research Strategy & Roadmap: Help define and execute the long-term research agenda for your domain. This will include aligning research initiatives with Cloudflare’s product roadmap, to ensure that today’s experiments become tomorrow’s core features
as well as leading initiatives that define tomorrow and help build a better internet.
Standards & External Impact: Support the team in contributing to global internet standards (e.g., IETF, W3C, NIST) and maintaining Cloudflare’s presence in top-tier academic conferences.
Cross-Functional Integration: Partner with Product and Engineering leaders to identify "research-shaped" problems within their stacks and deploy research-led solutions to production.
Scientific Rigor & Ethics: Ensure all research is conducted with the highest standards of integrity, particularly regarding data privacy and the ethical implications of AI and cryptography.
Evangelism: Help the team communicate their work to both internal and external audiences, such as through the Cloudflare Blog, white papers, and industry talks to maintain our status as a thought leader in the research community.

Proven Leadership: A minimum of 10 years of experience managing high-performing technical or research teams.
Academic and Industry Fluency: An advanced degree or equivalent industry experience in Computer Science, focusing on one of our core areas (Cryptography, AI, Systems, or Networking).
Publication Record: Familiarity with the academic lifecycle
understanding how to guide a project from a hypothesis to a peer-reviewed publication or a standard proposal.
Operational Excellence: Ability to manage "research uncertainty." You can help researchers navigate blockers and pivot when a hypothesis isn't panning out, while still meeting organizational milestones.
Recruitment: A track record of identifying and hiring top-tier research talent from both academia and industry.
Communication: Exceptional ability to translate complex theoretical concepts into business value for non-technical stakeholders.
Technology: Experience working with/for a hyperscaler or SAAS provider on high impact projects.

Senior Manager, Research

Key skills