Senior Director, R&D HR Business Partnering

Skills this role screens for

The company

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.

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Available Locations

• Austin, TX (preferred)
• San Francisco, CA

The work

About the Role

Cloudflare is scaling its global connectivity and security platform while transforming into an AI-native organization powered by our own AI harness and developer infrastructure. As Senior Director, R&D HR Business Partnering, you will lead a global team of embedded HRBPs supporting senior executives across Engineering, Product, Security, and Research.

In this role, you serve as the strategic HR leader for R&D and the primary conductor bridging business leadership with our Centers of Excellence (Total Rewards, Talent Acquisition, Talent Development, People Operations). You will challenge and champion the business—architecting an organization built for AI-augmented velocity while protecting and evaluating the essential human elements of work: character, critical judgment, empathy, and leadership trust.

Key Focus Areas & Responsibilities

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Business Acumen & COE Conduction

• Partner directly with the Head of R&D and technical VPs to align talent strategy with Cloudflare’s product roadmap, platform architecture, and operational goals.
• Act as the chief conductor across People Team COEs—synthesizing R&D’s operational realities to push COEs for tailored, high-impact talent programs while challenging R&D leaders to elevate their organizational standards.
• Apply analytical rigor to people metrics, diagnosing organizational health, attrition trends, and productivity indicators to guide business decisions proactively.

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Organizational Design & AI Integration

Talent Portfolio Management & Human Judgment

• Architect agile, high-velocity R&D structures designed for AI-native workflows, optimizing team size, spans of control, and cross-functional interfaces across platform and product teams.
• Partner with engineering leadership to rethink operating rhythms and team structures as development shifts from traditional models to AI-assisted, agent-driven engineering.
• Evolve technical career frameworks, leveling, and role definitions to reflect the higher leverage expected in AI-native engineering environments.
• Drive succession planning, critical-role mapping, and retention strategies for specialized technical talent across Cloudflare’s global hubs.
• Establish clear boundaries between work optimized by AI and decisions requiring human judgment, ethical clarity, nuance, and character.

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Driving Change & Strategic Initiatives

Lead a global team of HRBPs, setting a high standard for strategic partnership, business fluency, and execution speed.

• Drive complex, continuous change initiatives across global R&D teams, equipping leaders to navigate structural evolution, technological pivots, and shifting priorities with clarity.
• Deliver custom, service-oriented solutions tailored to business needs, providing high-trust coaching to senior technical leaders as they navigate complex team dynamics with empathy and results.
• Team Leadership

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What You'll Bring

• Leadership & Scale: 15+ years of progressive HR experience, including 5+ years leading an HRBP team supporting technical R&D, Engineering, or Product orgs in high-growth environments.
• Core Pillar Excellence: Demonstrated expertise across all four functional buckets: business acumen, organizational design, talent portfolio management, and driving change.
• AI & Human Acumen: Deep understanding of how AI tools reshape technical workflows, combined with strong character assessment and human judgment when evaluating leadership potential and organizational health.
• COE Orchestration: Proven track record acting as an operational conductor between executive stakeholders and specialized People functions to deliver integrated talent solutions.
• Executive Presence: Ability to advise, challenge, and coach VP+ technical leaders with confidence, empathy, and business fluency.

What you get

Compensation

Compensation may be adjusted depending on work location.

Equity

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

• For San Francisco Bay area the estimated salary range is $304,000 - $380,000

What you get

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.

What you get

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

What you get

Financial Benefits

• Short and Long Term Disability Insurance
• Life & Accident Insurance
• 401(k) Retirement Savings Plan
• Employee Stock Participation Plan

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Time Off

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.…

• Flexible paid time off covering vacation and sick leave
• Leave programs, including parental, pregnancy health, medical, and bereavement leave