Available Locations: Austin, TX

About the role

Reporting to the Director of Vulnerability Management, the Lead Vulnerability Management Engineer will serve as the technical authority for the program, focusing on the architecture, systems design, and long-term technology strategy for Cloudflare's vulnerability management capabilities. You will lead the evaluation and integration of advanced security technologies and systems across global infrastructure and cloud environments. As a senior technical lead, you will work closely with Engineering, Infrastructure, and Product teams to architect scalable remediation workflows and drive effective risk reduction. A key focus of this role is leveraging emerging technologies, including AI, to automate the vulnerability lifecycle and enhance operational efficiency. We are looking for a highly technical, proactive leader capable of designing complex integrations and managing large-scale remediation initiatives.

This role may require flexibility to be on-call outside of standard working hours to address technical issues as needed.

Responsibilities

• Serve as the primary technical lead for the Vulnerability Management team, providing architectural guidance and mentoring team members on complex technical challenges.
• Lead the architecture, systems design, technology evaluation, and systems integration for the global VM program, ensuring tooling is effectively embedded across the technology stack.
• Oversee and conduct advanced vulnerability scanning, performing in-depth validation of findings to verify accuracy, filter false positives, and lead the triage and prioritization of critical risks.
• Collaborate closely with technology owners and establish strong, trust-based relationships with engineering teams to drive the remediation or mitigation of complex vulnerabilities.
• Strategically manage and track the remediation backlog, maintaining a high-level view of risk reduction progress and reporting on systemic security trends.
• Design and implement AI-driven solutions to manage the vulnerability lifecycle and automate repetitive operational tasks within the vulnerability management domain.
• Contribute to the continuous improvement of global vulnerability management standards, procedures, and playbooks.
• Act as the primary technical liaison for the GRC team, translating complex technical vulnerabilities and mitigations into clear compliance context to support continuous readiness for audits (e.g., SOC-2, PCI-DSS, FedRAMP).
• Own the technical reporting and evidence generation process for internal and external audits, ensuring scanning cadences and remediation workflows consistently meet or exceed compliance baselines.
• Interpret evolving regulatory and compliance requirements into actionable technical scanning policies, ensuring newly mandated checks are quickly integrated into the active scanning program

Desirable Skills, Knowledge, and Experience:

• Solid understanding of cloud, enterprise, and government security frameworks, including DoD Impact Level (IL4), FedRAMP, SOC 2, PCI DSS, and NIST.
• 5+ years of Vulnerability Management experience, with a proven track record in a senior or lead technical capacity.
• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Security, or security certifications in a related field.
• Strong communication (written and verbal) and interpersonal skills, with the ability to effectively collaborate with technical and non-technical teams.
• A strong understanding of vulnerability risk scoring (e.g., CVSS, EPSS) and how to apply these risk assessment methodologies in a business context to support remediation.
• Hands-on experience with vulnerability scanning platforms (e.g., Qualys, Nessus, Rapid7 InsightVM).
• Strong analytical skills to identify patterns in data and distinguish between theoretical risk and actual exploitability.
• Demonstrated experience using AI to develop and manage complex workflows and applications.
• Proven experience supporting GRC or external audit cycles (e.g., PCI-DSS, SOC-2, ISO 27001) by providing technical evidence, explaining compensating controls, or articulating risk-acceptance justifications.
• The ability to translate high-level compliance policies and regulatory requirements into precise, technical vulnerability scanning configurations and remediation SLAs.

Bonus points:

• Experience with scripting languages (e.g., Python) for automation.
• Experience with specific AI-development tooling such as Opencode or Windsurf.
• Proficiency in using ticketing tools like JIRA for managing tickets and tasks.
• Hands on experience with Infrastructure pentesting tools.

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