Principal People Team Business Partner - R&D
Cloudflare · Hybrid
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Subject: Interested in the Principal People Team Business Partner - R&D role at Cloudflare
Hi Dana — I came across the Principal People Team Business Partner - R&D opening and wanted to reach out directly. I've spent the last few years doing exactly this kind of work, and Cloudflare stood out because…
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About the role
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: Austin, TX, San Francisco, CA, New York, NY
What You Would Do Here
Cloudflare is growing our People team. Our focus is finding the best people to work at Cloudflare and then allowing them to do their best work. As we continue to scale our global organization, we are looking for a trusted Business Partner who is naturally curious about our technology, deeply invested in our business strategy, and driven to help our people thrive.
In this role, you will report to the Senior Director, People Team Business Partners and serve as a heavy-hitting strategic partner to our senior leadership across Product, Engineering and Security.
You won't just execute HR programs; you will actively architect them. You will focus on macro-level organizational design, sophisticated talent management strategies, systemic change leadership, and workforce planning that aligns directly with our aggressive business goals. Moving at our pace brings a lot of change, complexity, and ambiguity—and a little bit of chaos. Cloudflarians thrive on that and are comfortable being uncomfortable. You will bring critical thought, deep business acumen, and a strong point of view to help our leaders navigate this unrelenting pace, transforming potential friction into high-impact execution.
Who You Are
Motivated by cultivating high-performance culture, building great businesses, and helping people do their best work, you are a seasoned, consultative People leader. You don't just adapt to the future of work—you actively leverage modern tools and a relentless curiosity to shape it.
- Experienced & Proven: You have 12+ years of progressive experience on a People/HR team, with at least 3+ years operating as a principal business partner backing complex, fast-paced corporate functions.
- Business-First Strategist: You possess keen business acumen and effortlessly link HR strategy to commercial and operational outcomes. You think like a business leader who happens to specialize in people, always looking for ways to enable teams to hit their goals.
- Relentlessly Curious: You possess an innate curiosity about what we build, how our teams operate, and what makes our people tick. You dive deep into the data and the dynamics of your organizations to diagnose root causes rather than just treating symptoms.
- AI & Tech Savvy: You embrace modern innovation, utilizing AI and advanced digital tooling as strategic force multipliers. You leverage AI to enhance your personal productivity, streamline operational efficiency, and uncover data-driven insights that solve complex organizational challenges. (And yes, you still secretly love a sophisticated spreadsheet!)
- Architect of Change: You have a proven track record of leading large-scale change initiatives through highly ambiguous environments. You know what organizational complexity looks like and possess the resilience and resourcefulness to drive ideation into concrete action.
- Program Builder: You have built scalable, enterprise-grade programs from the ground up and have a demonstrated history of establishing immediate credibility and trust across all levels of a distributed, virtual organization.
- Empathic Influencer & Communicator: You lead with empathy but do not shy away from radical candor. You are a masterful communicator—whether presenting to executives, writing strategic proposals, or delivering difficult feedback face-to-face.
- High Integrity: Uncompromising when it comes to your ethics, you speak truth to power, act with deep respect, and lead with dignity.
Key Responsibilities
- Strategic Advisory: Act as a trusted advisor to R&D executive leadership, translating business objectives into long-term workforce strategies, organizational designs, and succession plans.
- Insight-Driven Problem Solving: Synthesize complex qualitative and quantitative data—leveraging AI-driven insights and engagement analytics—to proactively identify trends, mitigate risks, and design predictive people solutions.
- Change Leadership: Guide leadership and teams through structural evolutions, hyper-growth scaling, and shifting business priorities with minimal disruption to engagement and output.
- Talent & Capability Building: Partner with business leaders and People team Centers of Excellence (COEs) to design high-impact initiatives around talent development, performance elevation, and total rewards.
Compensation
Compensation may be adjusted depending on work location.
● For San Francisco Bay Area based hires: Estimated annual salary of $187,000 - $257,000.
● For New York City and Washington based hires: Estimated annual salary of $178,000 - $245,000.
This role is eligible to earn incentive compensation under Cloudflare’s Sales Compensation Plan. The estimated annual salary range includes the on-target incentive compensation that may be attained in this role under the Sales Compensation Plan.
Equity
This role is eligible to participate in Cloudflare’s equity plan.
Benefits
Cloudflare offers a complete package of benefits and programs to support you and your family. Our benefits programs can help you pay health care expenses, support caregiving, build capital for the future and make life a little easier and fun! The below is a description of our benefits for employees in the United States, and benefits may vary for employees based outside the U.S.
Health & Welfare Benefits
● Medical/Rx Insurance
● Dental Insurance
● Vision Insurance
● Flexible Spending Accounts
● Commuter Spending Accounts
● Fertility & Family Forming Benefits
● On-demand mental health support and Employee Assistance Program
● Global Travel Medical Insurance
Financial Benefits
● Short and Long Term Disability Insurance
● Life & Accident Insurance
● 401(k) Retirement Savings Plan
● Employee Stock Participation Plan
Time Off
● Flexible paid time off covering vacation and sick leave
● Leave programs, including parental, pregnancy health, medical, and bereavement leave
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.