Vice President, Emerging Technologies & Incubation

Cloudflare, Inc.
medical insurance, dental insurance, vision insurance, paid time off, sick time, long term disability, 401(k)
United States, California, San Francisco
101 Townsend Street (Show on map)
Apr 10, 2025
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! Location: Austin, TX or San Francisco, CA About the department Emerging Technology and Incubation (ETI) helps shape the future of the Internet. Cloudflare secures, accelerates, and powers millions of destinations on the Internet from small blogs to 35% of the Fortune 500. ETI is responsible for shipping the technologies we think those customers, and the rest of the Internet, will need over the next decade. We created ETI years ago as a small, autonomous team that could equip Cloudflare to break into new markets and industries as the Internet evolves. The team is not just a home for science experiments. ETI takes new research and applies it to build something people want - or will want in the future. Ultimately, the success of the team is measured by its ability to both create new revenue streams for the company and to help Cloudflare secure and connect an increasing percentage of the Internet. The team operates independently from Cloudflare's core Product and Engineering team (though those partner teams are "Customer Zero" for anything that we build inside of ETI). The group relies on separate processes, structure, and timelines that allow it to move with greater flexibility. ETI consists primarily of engineers and some Product Managers working alongside a handful of designers. The Product Managers in ETI are the first "go-to-market" advocates for what is built inside of ETI until those solutions mature to a point that the Cloudflare revenue team is ready to sell them widely. The mission of ETI is to help prepare Cloudflare for the future, but that broad objective leaves plenty of room for flexibility and ambition. The scope of problems tackled by ETI range from shipping free tools that help build a better Internet, like our 1.1.1.1 resolver, to launching the foundations of products trusted by some of the world's largest organizations like our Zero Trust suite. ETI's leaders and team members must be ready to adapt accordingly. New products that started inside of ETI include: Cloudflare's industry-leading Developer Platform products like our serverless compute solution, our storage offering, and our AI inference and services layer. Cloudflare's best-in-class Zero Trust product line, including our Zero Trust Access product, our Secure Web Gateway, our private networking technology, our data loss prevention suite, and our mobile and desktop clients. Cloudflare's privacy solutions, like our 1.1.1.1 DNS resolver, our consumer VPN product WARP, and the technologies we build with partners like Apple and Meta to preserve privacy on the Internet. Cloudflare's Media products, including our video streaming platform and real-time calls solution. Building blocks that change the economics of traditional costs on the Internet like our domain registrar. Not all products built inside of ETI go on to become core Cloudflare offerings. That is by design. We task ETI with taking "shots on goal" - running many small experiments, rapidly, to determine what works and what does not. We believe that ETI is a critical component to our competitive edge as a business. Innovation happens in every department at Cloudflare, but it is the job of the ETI team to relentlessly push all of us forward so that existing and new customers continue to bet on us. The success of ETI is a leading indicator for the success of Cloudflare as a whole. About the role You will lead ETI at Cloudflare. You will be responsible for shipping the products and technologies we expect customers will need tomorrow. You will own the roadmap, the execution, and the initial customer traction for the next generation of Cloudflare solutions. You will be a player coach alongside some of the best engineers and product people in the industry. The success of ETI relies on its people and you will also be expected to recruit and retain great talent. In this role, you will also be a trusted resource to other executives. Leaders in other functions at the company will rely on your technical judgment as we evaluate the right decisions to make and places to focus. Beyond just ETI, you will be a champion for Cloudflare as a whole to the industry. Many of the first customers to adopt new products built in ETI are existing customers who rely on Cloudflare's core existing product set. You should build relationships with those customers and help them find value from their existing deployments so that you can earn their trust to try new services from ETI. Bonus points if you have Experience as a founder of a leading-edge technology start-up. Engineering background inside of research or experimental groups in software companies. Demonstrable track record of success selling new ideas and solutions to buyers. What you will do Manage a team of Engineering and Product leaders who are responsible for shipping dozens of new products and ideas as Cloudflare explores where to focus next. Build relationships with executive leaders at customer, prospect, and partner companies to learn from and influence the technologies they need from Cloudflare in the next five and ten years. Be the first champion and seller of new products built inside of ETI to internal and external customers. Be customer support when needed. Help your team and Cloudflare as a whole distinguish between what is a "good" idea and what is a "great" idea when we decide how to allocate the bets that Cloudflare makes for the next decade and beyond. Be hands on to help Product leaders prioritize the right problems and to help Engineering leaders make the right decisions so that they can move fast. Be available to help debug customer problems, internal errors, or broken user flows. Edit what is being built. Help teams inside of ETI focus, remove the non-essential, define the right scope to move quickly. Do your best to predict the future. Follow industries on the Internet as they evolve or appear. Connect with other leaders on the Internet who are also helping shape what its future looks like. Be an early adopter of new technologies as we evaluate what those mean for Cloudflare. Hunt down and remove the blockers that get in the way of shipping great software. Give structure to products as they evolve from ideas to prototypes to mainline Cloudflare solutions. Equip your teams to navigate pricing, packaging, marketing and the customer success of new products as they mature inside of ETI and eventually graduate into our core Product and Engineering organization. Embrace the ambiguity of the unknown. Don't wait to be told what to build. Seek out and explore the areas where you think we should move. Compensation The compensation range in the San Francisco bay area for this position is $330,000 - $380,000 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 hr@cloudflare.com or via mail at 101 Townsend St. San Francisco, CA 94107.