Build and operate the distributed storage layer underpinning Cloudflare's Emerging Technologies products

Cloudflare's ETI Storage Infrastructure team owns everything from physical storage hardware to the distributed databases running on top of it, at global scale, using Rust, Go, Saltstack, and Terraform. This interview targets strong distributed-systems fundamentals (consistency, consensus, replication, fault/partition tolerance) plus hands-on storage and infrastructure-as-code experience, end-to-end code ownership from design doc to production runbook.

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What this interview tests

Distributed systems: consistency, consensus, replication, fault/partition tolerance
Storage fundamentals: block devices, filesystems, SSD characteristics
Infrastructure as code (Terraform, Saltstack) at global scale
Rust/Go systems programming
End-to-end ownership: design docs, observability, runbooks

Common question themes

Reason through a consensus or replication tradeoff for a distributed storage system

Design a safe capacity-expansion or hardware-rebuild rollout across failure domains

Debug a high-throughput, low-latency storage system issue

Discuss storage-hardware fundamentals (SSD wear, block devices, filesystems)

Automate away operational toil with tooling or infrastructure-as-code

How candidates describe it

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