Customer Solutions Architect

Available Location: Austin, TX
About the Role:
As a Customer Solutions Architect at Cloudflare, you will be an integral part of the post-sales team, serving as the senior-most technical expert and advisor for our most strategic and technically complex customers. This role is designed for a seasoned technologist who not only possesses deep technical expertise but also thrives on onsite customer interaction, solving real-world challenges, and leading through thought and innovation. You will play a crucial part in helping customers maximise the value of Cloudflare's solutions, ensuring they are fully equipped to meet their security, performance, and reliability needs.
In this role, you will go beyond traditional support by engaging as a trusted advisor, understanding each customer's unique infrastructure, challenges, and goals. Your guidance will help architect solutions that enhance customer operations, optimise performance, and minimise risks. Customers will rely on your expertise to tackle complex technical issues, refine their architectural frameworks, and drive business success through Cloudflare's technology.
As a thought leader, you'll not only support existing customers but also contribute to Cloudflare's reputation and industry presence. This involves representing Cloudflare at conferences, industry events, and speaking engagements, where you'll share your insights and experiences with a wider audience. Your role will extend to writing in-depth knowledge articles, white papers, and thought leadership pieces that contribute to the technical community and empower both customers and Cloudflare's internal teams.
While embedded onsite with the customer, you'll also closely collaborate with Customer Success, Support, Sales, Partners, Product Management, and Engineering to advocate for customer needs and ensure that our product/solutions roadmap aligns with real-world requirements. Through these cross-functional relationships, you'll bring valuable customer insights that influence product improvements and help refine best practices, solidifying Cloudflare's position as a leader in secure, fast, and reliable internet solutions.
This role is ideal for an individual contributor who excels at combining strategic thinking with hands-on expertise and implementation, and enjoys working with customers onsite in their environment. You'll have the autonomy to shape solutions, make impactful decisions, and mentor teams across Cloudflare. As a key part of our mission, your contributions will directly support Cloudflare's vision to build a better internet by enabling customer success through technology and innovation.
Responsibilities:

• Customer Engagement & Technical Leadership
• Serve as a trusted advisor to key enterprise customers, providing technical insights, best practices, and strategic recommendations that support their business goals and drive success with Cloudflare's solutions.
• Lead architectural discussions, design sessions, and solution reviews to ensure the optimal application of Cloudflare's offerings in customer environments.
• Diagnose complex technical issues and deliver effective, strategic solutions in collaboration with the support and product teams.
• Thought Leadership & Knowledge Sharing
• Represent Cloudflare at industry conferences, webinars, and customer events, sharing insights and best practices with a broad audience.
• Write in-depth knowledge articles, white papers, and best practice guides to support customers and internal teams, contributing to Cloudflare's repository of resources.
• Act as an industry thought leader by identifying emerging trends and developing relevant strategies to address them, positioning Cloudflare as an innovative leader in the space.
• Cross-functional Collaboration
• Partner closely with Sales, Customer Success, Support, Partners, Product Management, and Engineering to ensure customer feedback and insights influence the product roadmap and enhance the customer experience.
• Mentor and upskill internal teams and junior technical resources, fostering a culture of continuous learning and technical excellence.
• Consultation & Application of Industry Best Practices
• Leverage industry knowledge to advise customers and implement best practices in areas like security, network optimisation, scalability, performance tuning, and more, tailored to their unique needs.
• Stay current with industry trends and Cloudflare's evolving solutions to provide informed and forward-thinking guidance & configuration enhancements.

Desirable skills, knowledge and experience may include a combination of:

• 8+ years of experience in a technical customer-facing role such as Solutions Architect, Technical Account Manager, or similar, ideally in cloud networking, security, or web infrastructure.
• Extensive knowledge of networking protocols, cybersecurity, web performance, and cloud infrastructure.
• Experience working with Cloudflare products or similar web infrastructure and security solutions is highly desirable.
• Exceptional written and verbal communication skills, with experience presenting complex topics to technical and non-technical audiences.
• Proven track record of speaking at conferences, writing technical articles, and establishing yourself as a thought leader in a technology field.
• Strong consultative skills, with a history of effectively solving complex technical problems in customer environments.
• Ability to translate customer requirements into practical, scalable solutions that align with Cloudflare's technology stack.
• Prior customer onsite placement experience is a plus.