We have always strived to make Cloudflare somewhere where our entire team feels safe and empowered to bring their whole selves to work. It’s the best way to enable the many incredible people we have working here to be able to do their best work. With that as context, we are proud to share that Cloudflare has been certified and recognized as one of the Top 100 Most Loved Workplaces in 2023 by Newsweek and the Best Practice Institute (BPI) for the second consecutive year.

Cloudflare’s ranking follows surveys of more than 2 million employees at companies with team sizes ranging from 50 to 10,000+, and includes US-based firms and international companies with a strong US presence. As part of the qualification for the certification, Cloudflare participated in a company-wide global employee survey — so this award isn’t a hypothetical, it’s driven by our employees’ sentiment and responses.

With this recognition, we wanted to reflect on what’s new, what’s remained the same, and what’s ahead for the team at Cloudflare. There are a few things that especially stand out:

It starts with our mission and people

Helping to build a better Internet.

If you speak to any member of the Cloudflare team about why they’re here, they’ll almost certainly talk about our mission. Whether it’s in our careers, or our lives more generally, so many of us have been positively impacted by the Internet. It is an incredible resource for humanity, and being able to contribute back to it is definitely a draw for many Cloudflarians. In an internal survey from September 2023, 92% of our team stated that they are inspired by Cloudflare’s mission to help build a better Internet — and 88% said that their work is important to the company.

Working on these kinds of problems, at the scale Cloudflare is at, requires constant innovation and figuring out solutions at the frontier of technology. At the same time, Cloudflare for years has been giving back to the community and society — through programs like Project Galileo, Athenian Project, and Project Cybersafe Schools — that make us especially proud of the work we do.

Cloudflarians get a real sense of our company culture, team, mission, and how we work, right when they start interviewing with us. Candidate feedback paints a picture of what this looks and feels like:

“The entire process is really different from anything I’ve experienced before — and I’m enjoying it very much. Also, the informal tone makes it much more human and everyone is so approachable.”  

“I’ve never met a group of people at a company that are all consistently excited about the work they are doing.”

Before anyone gets an offer, every candidate in the final stage connects with one of our executive leaders including our co-founders. This has been part of our interview process for many years, and is designed to ensure candidates truly understand what they’re signing up for in their role as part of joining the Cloudflare team, and to make our executive team accessible to everyone starting on day one. Transparency is one of our core values, and we want all employees to have a direct line to our leadership.

Transparency also serves as our guiding light when we engage with the public. We are quick to share detailed reports amid and after incidents, in the hopes that they will benefit the Internet-at-large. And we share regular impact reports detailing our progress around key environmental, social, and governance initiatives.

We have continued to receive unmatched interest with close to half a million applicants in the first half of 2023, which is nearly a 300% increase from 2022. Our offer acceptance rate remained equally as impressive at a rate of 90%. We are continuing to hire worldwide with hundreds of open positions across the organization ranging from Sales to Engineering.

Supported & Flexible

We are committed to developing a globally distributed team with a flexible working approach. Individual teams opt into: hybrid, remote, or in-office, depending on what works best for the folks on the team, and the team more broadly. As an example, we've seen less tenured folks on certain teams wanting to go into the office more frequently to work together in-person. For reasons across the board, we give teams the ability to choose what works best for them. We’ve found that this approach gives teams the opportunity to establish their optimal working arrangements that fit with their objectives and enable collaboration.

Our paid time off policy is on a take-what-you-need basis. We encourage employees to find a comfortable work-life balance by taking as many days off as they need while still being able to perform their jobs satisfactorily.

We want to empower and inspire our team members to do their best work every day — and this includes making sure they feel happy, healthy, and fulfilled both inside and outside of our workplace. Aside from comprehensive healthcare benefits, this also includes support for family planning like parental leave and Carrot Fertility, access to mental health and mindfulness programs through Ginger and Headspace apps, and three days of paid time off each year to volunteer in our respective communities.

Diversity, equity, and inclusion is a priority at Cloudflare to help ensure a sense of belonging and community for all of our employees and to best propel our business forward. Our 15+ Employee Resource Groups (ERGs) are employee-led and have designated executive sponsors of each group. These communities come together to support each other, celebrate their cultures, and help with initiatives to educate, support professional development, and more. We have a robust number of ERGs and this continues to grow as the diversity at Cloudflare expands.

Consistently growing our team

Our employees believe that Cloudflare is a special place, with an especially meaningful mission. They believe there is no other place where a team so small is having such a large impact on the Internet. To keep up, it's critical that we have great people across the company to help us continue our mission. To learn more about the Cloudflare career opportunities, please check out Cloudflare Careers!