Principal People Team Business Partner - R&D

About the Role

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.

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.

Desirable Skills, Knowledge, and Experience

• 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.

Pay

• San Francisco Bay Area based hires: Estimated annual salary of $187,000 - $257,000.
• New York City, Washington, and California (excluding Bay Area) based hires: Estimated annual salary of $178,000 - $245,000.
• Colorado based hires: Estimated annual salary of $162,000 - $223,000.
• 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.
• 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