Network Engineering Intern (Summer 2026)

Available Location: Austin TX

Role Summary

Cloudflare operates one of the worlds largest and most interconnected networks spanning 335 cities across every region of the globe. As a Network Engineering Intern on the Edge Network & Backbone team youll work under close mentorship from senior and principal network engineers on the real operational network that keeps that infrastructure running. From provisioning capacity to triaging faults youll be supported at every step by experienced engineers and AI-enabled tooling purpose-built for our network. This is a rare opportunity to enter the networking industry by gaining real experience with infrastructure that carries traffic for millions of websites and users not a simulated lab environment.

Role Responsibilities

• Provision and configure network hardware and software as part of capacity expansion across Cloudflares global edge network following well-established playbooks under engineer guidance.
• Monitor network health and investigate non-urgent faults using Cloudflares AI-enabled troubleshooting tooling escalating where needed and documenting findings to help the broader team resolve issues faster.
• Triage and investigate network issues in collaboration with other internal teams leveraging our internal tooling to accelerate diagnosis and resolution.
• Create and maintain operational documentation runbooks and knowledge-base articles that improve the efficiency of our team and tooling.
• Participate in structured troubleshooting sessions with senior engineers building diagnostic skills across BGP routing and hardware faults in a production environment.
• Support network operations by contributing to shift handoffs status updates and incident tracking as part of the day-to-day ops rhythm.

Role Requirements (Must-Have Skills)

• Currently enrolled in or recently completed a degree in Networking Computer Science or a related technical discipline.
• Holds or is actively pursuing at least one industry networking certification (CCNA JNCIA or equivalent).
• Working knowledge of BGP and the OSI model with the ability to reason through network problems layer by layer.
• Familiarity with at least one scripting language (Python Bash or similar) or demonstrated comfort using AI tools to write and adapt scripts for network automation tasks.
• Demonstrated ability to learn new technologies quickly including vendor operating systems and internal tooling under the guidance of a mentor.
• Strong written communication skills youll be writing documentation and ticket responses that engineers and customers will rely on.

Nice-to-Have Skills

• Hands-on experience with network operating systems across multiple vendors such as Juniper Cisco or Arista.
• Understanding of anycast routing or how large-scale Internet networks distribute traffic.
• Experience with Linux system administration.
• Familiarity with optical transport technologies.
• Experience working in a customer-facing technical support environment.

A note on this role

This internship is deliberately operational in scope. You wont be handed a greenfield project to present at the end of the summer. Instead youll be embedded in a lean high-trust team and expected to contribute to real infrastructure from week one. The upside: by the end of six months youll have hands-on production experience that most networking graduates take years to obtain. Were looking for candidates who see that as a feature not a bug.

Internship Duration: 6 Months

Schedule: Full-time (3 days per week in office)

Compensation: 45/hr

What Makes Cloudflare Special

Were not just a highly ambitious large-scale technology company. Were 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 weve equipped more than 2400 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 Cloudflares 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 weve 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. Heres the deal - we dont 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 youd like to be a part of Wed love to hear from you!

Please note that applicants who progress to the offer stage of the interview process may be asked to attend an in-person interview within one of the Cloudflare Offices or Cloudflare Hubs. More details about this will be available at that stage of the interview process.

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 persons 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 or via mail at 101 Townsend St. San Francisco CA 94107.