Research Intern

Cloudflare

  • Toronto, ON
  • Training
  • Full-time
  • 2 months ago
Location(s) Available: US, Portugal, UK, Germany, France, Netherlands, Alberta, Canada, British Columbia, Canada, Ontario, Canada, Ottawa, Canada, Quebec, CanadaAbout the departmentCloudflare's Research Team is involved with building the future of Cloudflare by tackling strategic projects that have a large impact on Cloudflare systems and the Internet at large. Our focus is on solving difficult problems that serve our goal of connecting and protecting users, applications, and data, while always making the Internet better.In our quest to make the Internet better, we frequently find ourselves exploring open problems at the boundaries of current work in scalable security, privacy, and systems, including AI/ML and performance. We make cutting edge research contributions in-house, as well as in collaboration with academia, Internet standards organizations like the IETF, and more!Our team includes experts in areas including cryptography, privacy, measurement, cache optimization, and time series analysis. We seek interns that augment our existing expertise as well as those who are working in broadly related areas. We are researchers at heart, and we love learning! While we have a range of potential intern projects prepared, we're particularly interested in candidates who have found a piece of Cloudflare they would like to improve, and have an idea of what they would like to do.More information about Cloudflare's approach to research can be found .What you'll doCloudflare's Research Team solves difficult problems in security, performance, and privacy at scale. This involves systems engineering, open source software development, protocol design, implementation of primitives, with lots of measurement alongside. We make cutting edge research contributions in-house, as well as in collaboration with academia, Internet standards organizations like the IETF, and more!Successful candidates will be matched to suitable projects. We also welcome novel proposals and ideas that can help to inform or build a better Internet (in the form of a max 200 word proposal).Research Program AreasCloudflare Research has six current program areas. Candidates whose interest or expertise lie outside one of these areas are also encouraged to apply, particularly if they have a particular, specific interest in an aspect of Cloudflare's technical stack or operations.Applied AI/MLMachine learning and statistical automation is a valuable toolkit for research across Cloudflare's products and services. The AI/ML research team seeks to answers cutting edge questions at the intersection of machine learning and scalable system design to answer questions about fraud, predictive optimization, and distributed learning.Internet Infrastructure and GovernanceCloudflare Research is dedicated to the health of the broader Internet, including significant work with standards bodies (IETF, W3C, NIST, e.g.) and open implementations. This program explores ways to improve the underlying infrastructure of the Internet and promote its fair and equitable governance. This umbrella also includes decentralized web technologies and protocols such as IPFS and Web3. Example project areas include Internet routing security and resilience (e.g., RPKI, BGP), DNS and domain name security improvements, and addressing the global digital divide.Measurement and Performance OptimizationA key driver of research questions and outcomes is observability into system behavior. This program area focuses on researching and developing novel techniques to measure and improve the performance and reliability of websites, applications, and services hosted on Cloudflare infrastructure. Example project areas include cache and CDN optimization, time series and ML/AI based performance analysis, edge computing and serverless applications, and network congestion control and latency reduction techniques.Privacy and Data ProtectionThis program is about reducing or eliminating personal data at all layers of the stack, as well as metadata on the broader Internet, to ensure the protection of user data and maintain compliance with global data protection regulations. This work includes efforts to upgrade protocols to enable better data privacy (e.g. hostnames -- via SNI, IP addresses, or fingerprintable data) as well as cryptographic techniques such as secret splitting to limit the potential for compromising private data. Example projects include cryptographic Attestation of Personhood, privacy-preserving analytics, website fingerprinting protection, and connection coalescing.Security and Resilience​​The Internet is continually evolving, and dangers to the Internet evolve with it. This program is dedicated to researching and developing innovative solutions to protect Cloudflare's infrastructure and its customers, as well as the Internet at large, from various cyber threats. Efforts in this area frequently include close collaboration with teams across Cloudflare, such as a recent push to deploy post-quantum security throughout Cloudflare's internal network. Example project areas include DDoS attack mitigation and prevention, bot and automated threat detection, secure DNS, and zero-trust architectures and access control.Systems and Formal MethodsFormal methods are a powerful toolkit for answering the types of questions around privacy, security, and correctness that are core to Cloudflare's operations. The Systems and Formal Methods group is the home for questions about system architecture and correctness that fall outside the realm of pure networking or privacy research. Sample projects include kernel-level cryptography implementations, cache design and observability, and logging and analysis.General Intern Requirements
  • Interest in solving open-ended problems.
  • Proven track record of peer-reviewed research, open-source software contributions, or standards development
  • Some level of research maturity is expected, but students at every level are welcome to apply
  • Evidence of ability to work in multiple languages -- Go, Rust and Javascript are particularly desirable.
  • Experience (and love) for debugging to ensure the system works in all cases.
  • Experience with a continuous integration workflow, and use of source control (we use git)
  • Strong systems level programming skills.
  • Willing and eager to share knowledge, with the skills to do so.
Additional RequirementsKnowledge or experience with at least one of the following:
  • Computer networking protocols (TCP/IP, DNS, BGP, QUIC, etc.) and related algorithms
  • Machine learning analysis for systems or network optimization
  • Authentication protocols, applied cryptography, PKI and SSL/TLS
  • Operating or distributed systems analysis or development
  • Applied cryptography and cryptographic protocols
  • Measurement for network and computer systems
Bonus Points:
  • Proven track record of independently driving projects in a fast-paced environment
  • Experience with high throughput/low latency real-time systems and/or content delivery networks

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