Principal People Team Business Partner - M&A / Strategy

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: Austin, TX or San Francisco, CA
Position Overview: We are seeking a high-velocity, strategic People M&A Leader to own the human side of our mergers and acquisitions end-to-end. In this role, you will be the single designated point person (DRI) and strategic counterpart to our Corporate Development team. You will own the People lifecycle for all deals-from early-stage confirmatory due diligence through post-close integration.
Acting as the ultimate "Hub to the Spokes," you will translate deal rationale into practical execution strategies, coordinating fluidly across Recruiting, Total Rewards, People Operations, Workplace Immigration, and Employment Legal. This is a builder role for someone who thrives under compressed timelines, loves creating order out of ambiguity, and is obsessed with delivering a world-class onboarding experience for newly acquired teams.
Key Responsibilities:

1. Corporate Development Partnership & Diligence

• Serve as the primary People team representative alongside Corporate Development and Legal from deal kickoff through close.
• Lead rapid-fire HR due diligence to assess target company culture, compensation structures, and compliance risks.
• Evaluate technical talent density and provide critical input into deal structures, focus areas for retention pools, and offer letters.
• Partner with finance and legal to analyze equity structures, ensuring seamless alignment on equity rollover mechanics and cash/stock retention incentives.

1. Cross-Functional Orchestration (The Hub to the Spokes)

• Mobilize and quarterback cross-functional People teams (Recruiting, Comp, People Ops, Immigration, Payroll) to ensure workstreams are perfectly sequenced (e.g., ensuring visa/immigration verifications clear before offer letters drop).
• Build the infrastructure, checklists, and automated workflows that don't exist yet to scale our M&A engine.
• Identify recurring failure modes across deals and implement upstream fixes to continuously optimize our playbooks.

1. Integration & Elite Talent Retention

• Provide a "white-glove" experience to incoming talent, serving as their primary advocate, guide, and escalation point as they navigate our culture and systems.
• Partner with leadership and Internal Comms to execute empathetic change management, addressing workforce anxiety through transparent communications, FAQs, and town halls.
• Design and execute organizational mapping and day-1 onboarding schedules to ensure acquired technical teams maintain momentum and feel integrated from day one.

Qualifications & Requirements:

• Experience: 6-10+ years of experience across People Operations, HRBP roles, or Program Management, with at least 3+ years directly owning People/HR workstreams for M&A transactions in high-growth tech environments.
• Startup Agility: Proven track record of building 0-to-1 processes. You excel in fast-moving, unstructured environments where templates are built on the fly.
• Execution Under Pressure: Outstanding project management skills; calm under pressure and capable of handling highly confidential data and compressed, unpredictable deal timelines.
• Technical & Core HR Fluency: Solid foundational understanding of employment legal basics, high-growth compensation structures, and visa/immigration complexities (critical for international or highly technical talent).
• Influence Without Authority: Exceptional communication and relationship-building skills. Ability to earn the trust of elite technical founders and seamlessly align cross-functional internal executives.

Compensation
Compensation may be adjusted depending on work location.
• For San Francisco Bay Area based hires: Estimated annual salary of $187,000 - $257,000.
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 [email protected] or via mail at 101 Townsend St. San Francisco, CA 94107.