Senior Incident Response Analyst - REACT

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.

At Cloudflare, we’re not looking for people who wait for a polished roadmap; we’re looking for the builders who see the cracks in the Internet that everyone else has simply learned to live with. We value candidates who have the instinct to spot a "normalized" problem and the AI-native curiosity to create a solution using the latest tools. Our culture is built on iteration, leveraging AI to ship faster today to make it better tomorrow, while ensuring that every improvement, no matter how small, is shared across the team to lift everyone up. If you’re the type of person who values curiosity over bureaucracy, and that AI is a partner in solving tough problems to keep the Internet moving forward, you’ll fit right in.

Available Locations: Lisbon, Portugal

About the Role

Cloudflare is a system spanning the globe, on a mission to make the Internet safer and more powerful every day. To help fulfill this mission, we are seeking an incident response Analyst / Consultant to join our Cloudforce One REACT organization.

In this role, you will respond to active customer attacks across two primary tracks:
1) L7 mitigations — bot abuse, web scraping, credential stuffing, and WAF/API abuse.
2) L3/L4 mitigations — volumetric and protocol DDoS attacks.

You will execute hands-on edge mitigations, verify effectiveness with measurable KPIs, and communicate clearly with customers under pressure. This position requires an innovative, self-starting, detail-oriented problem solver with a passion for scoping, deploying, and validating mitigations in real time. You will engage with customers at all levels — including Executive, VP, Director, and engineering, serving an integral role alongside forensic analysts, threat researchers, detection engineers, and malware analysts.

What You’ll Do

1. Active Edge Mitigation
• Deploy and tune custom WAF rules (block, challenge, JS challenge, managed challenge) to stop abusive L7 traffic.
• Implement bot mitigations using request/behavior signals and, where applicable, fingerprinting signals; apply rate limiting and challenge policies.
• Execute L3/L4 DDoS mitigations (e.g., attack mode tuning, shunning, flow-based controls) to protect customer availability before traffic reaches the origin.
• Scope every mitigation tightly by path, endpoint, tenant, or audience to minimize collateral impact.

2. Customer Containment & Threat Isolation
• Identify and isolate infected hosts, revoke compromised sessions/identities, and stop data exfiltration when needed.
• Track unauthorized lateral movement, correlate threat actor activity, and execute containment that preserves evidence while neutralizing the adversary.
• Adapt mitigations as attacker tactics change without over-scoping or breaking legitimate traffic.

3. Verification, KPIs & Rollback
• Define “mitigated” using success criteria: service health recovery, reduced abusive match rate, and acceptable collateral limits.
• Verify effectiveness after each mitigation update using time-bucketed telemetry; rollback or re-scope immediately if collateral damage appears.
• Maintain a versioning mindset for mitigations so updates are reversible and auditable.

4. IR Lifecycle, Evidence & Reporting
• Support the full incident response lifecycle: investigation, containment, remediation, and recovery.
• Preserve forensic evidence (logs, volatile memory, disk images) according to standards to support legal, regulatory, or insurance requirements.
• Prepare high-fidelity incident reports and customer communications that are clear, accurate, and actionable for both executives and engineers.

Minimum Qualifications (Must-Haves)
• 3+ years of hands-on experience in SOC, incident response, or detection engineering.
• Proven experience deploying mitigations that affect live customer traffic — not only monitoring or investigation.
• Hands-on with at least one of the following: WAF rules/actions, DDoS protection controls, bot mitigations, rate limiting/challenge policies.
• Strong incident process discipline: triage → scope → mitigate → verify → communicate.
• In-depth understanding of Windows operating systems and general knowledge of Unix/Linux/Mac environments.
• Familiarity with cloud environments (AWS, Azure, O365, Google Cloud) and cloud IR methodologies.
• Strong technical knowledge of common network protocols and design patterns (TCP/IP, HTTPS, SSH, RDP, SMB, DNS).
• Solid understanding of MITRE ATT&CK and the NIST Cybersecurity Framework.
• Excellent verbal and written English communication skills with a proven ability to establish relationships and clearly explain complex technical findings to executive and technical clients.

Desirable Skills, Knowledge, and Experience
• Experience with Cloudflare products (WAF, DDoS protection, Bot Management, API Shield) or equivalent edge platforms.
• Familiarity with bot fingerprinting concepts (e.g., JA3/JA4) and behavioral analysis.
• Proficient in Python or Golang; capable of writing modular code or simple scripts that can be used remotely.
• Familiarity with YARA and writing rules to detect similar malware samples.
• Practical malware analysis experience with static, dynamic, and automated techniques.
• Understanding of source code, hex, binary, regular expressions, data correlation, and analysis (network flow and system logs).
• Familiarity with bash command-line executables to conduct static analysis and investigate Indicators of Compromise (IOCs).
• Experience with network protocols and devices. (BGP, OSPF, Routers, Firewalls, Switches)

Compensation

● For Portugal based hires: Estimated annual salary is between €54,000 - €75,000.

• The final offer will be inclusive of time exemption, in alignment with the applicable law and collective bargaining agreements.

Equity

This role is eligible to participate in Cloudflare’s equity plan.

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!

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 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.