just wrapped a cloudflare loop for a senior SWE role on their network infra team. sharing notes while they're fresh.
rounds (fully virtual, spread over two days): recruiter screen, pretty standard, 30 min technical screen with a current eng: one medium-ish leetcode problem plus general CS conversation systems design: design a global rate limiting system (obviously very on-brand for them) coding round: two problems, one algo, one more systems-y behavioral: two separate rounds, different interviewers
the systems design round was the most interesting one by far. my interviewer pushed back every time I gave a vague answer. said things like "okay but what happens when the data center in São Paulo loses connectivity mid-request?" the anycast stuff came up, they wanted to know if I actually understood how they route traffic, not just that they have edge nodes.
behavioral had a strong ownership theme. "tell me about a time you were responsible for something that failed" came up in both behavioral rounds. they want specifics, not softened narratives.
turnaround after onsite was about 9 business days for me. a bit slow but recruiter gave a heads up that debrief scheduling takes time.
one thing I underestimated: they care a lot about the actual Cloudflare product suite. spent 30 minutes on Workers, their Zero Trust stuff, and what problems the company is actually solving. I had done homework but the depth of the product questions still caught me a little off guard.