How Cloudflare Pays
Cloudflare's normalized E0 to IC5, M1 to M2 and Director through SVP ladder priced across 15 markets, with four-year RSUs, six-tranche co-founder performance shares, a Section 423 ESPP, a $60.55M CEO package at 387:1, and 103 to 126 H-1B filings in 2025.
Band Hierarchy
Cloudflare publishes no corporate grade table, no salary-band numbering and no global title map. The E0 through IC5, M1 to M2 and Director through SVP ladder used here is a normalized research framework built from Levels.fyi L1 to L6 groupings, Cloudflare job postings and the proxy statement; only the named executive officer and director tiers carry a company disclosure.
Individual contributor ladder — E0 through IC5
Management ladder — M1 and M2
Leadership ladder — Director through SVP
Executive
Disclosed executive layer
Track divergence
Hierarchy qualifications and legacy structures
- The L1 to L6 codes that appear on salary platforms are a benchmarking taxonomy applied by those platforms to Cloudflare submissions. They are not Cloudflare grade labels and should never be quoted back as though they were internal policy.
- Role families are not interchangeable inside a level. A sales L3, an engineering L3 and a support L3 can carry entirely different pay mixes, because the sales population is quota-driven while the engineering population is base plus equity.
- Cloudflare has no material predecessor merger in the period reviewed that would require legacy-band harmonisation. Acquired teams may hold their titles for a period, but no public legacy grade system was found.
- Public sample depth collapses outside the United States. India, the United Kingdom, Portugal, Singapore and Canada have usable cohorts at L3 and L4 only, Germany has a handful of unusually high submissions, and Japan has none at all.
- Vice President, Senior Vice President and President are corporate titles rather than hidden grade numbers, so this report treats them as title tiers and marks the SVP row as excluded from the range chart.
Peer-level mapping
| Band | Archetype | Peer mapping | Caveat |
|---|---|---|---|
| E0 | Intern / Graduate trainee | Intern and graduate programmes at Datadog, Fastly and the large cloud vendors | Internship pay is quoted hourly or monthly in Cloudflare postings and annualized here, so it is not a salaried band.Reported 2026 intern packages of $45 per hour and $7,800 a month in Austin with a $1,000 monthly housing allowance, and £25.32 per hour in London. |
| IC1 | Associate / Software Engineer I | Levels.fyi L1; a typical large-technology entry engineer | L1 to L6 is a salary-platform grouping, not a Cloudflare grade, and a sales L1 and an engineering L1 are not the same job.Levels.fyi national L1 median of $130,071 base and $143,875 total, with $13,804 of annualized equity and a zero cash bonus, lifted by the 1.05 San Francisco factor. |
| IC2 | Software Engineer II | Levels.fyi L2; an independent mid-level engineer | L1 to L6 is a salary-platform grouping, not a Cloudflare grade, and a sales L2 and an engineering L2 are not the same job.Levels.fyi national L2 median of $143,250 base and $165,047 total, with $21,797 of annualized equity, lifted by the 1.05 San Francisco factor. |
| IC3 | Senior Software Engineer | Levels.fyi L3; a senior engineer at a comparable infrastructure vendor | This is the deepest reported cohort in every geography, so it is the most reliable rung of the crosswalk and the one to negotiate from.Levels.fyi national L3 median of $166,708 base and $200,187 total, with $33,479 of annualized equity, lifted by the 1.05 San Francisco factor. |
| IC4 | Staff / Lead Engineer | Levels.fyi L4; a staff or lead engineer | Equity overtakes cash growth at this rung, so a base-only comparison against a peer offer understates the gap in both directions.Levels.fyi national L4 median of $207,750 base and $290,708 total, with $82,958 of annualized equity, lifted by the 1.05 San Francisco factor. |
| IC5 | Principal / Senior Staff Engineer | Levels.fyi L5; a principal or senior staff engineer | Cloudflare postings for principal roles commonly ask for eight or more years, but placement follows scope rather than tenure.Levels.fyi national L5 median of $236,750 base, $109,930 of annualized equity and a $200 cash bonus for $346,880 total, lifted by the 1.05 San Francisco factor. |
| M1 | Engineering / Functional Manager | First-line manager; broadly comparable in scope to IC4 | Levels.fyi manager pages disagree with each other because of sample and category definitions, so the manager rungs are the weakest part of the ladder.Reported United States engineering-manager package of about $271,000 total, lifted by the 1.05 San Francisco factor; the small cash target is modeled, not published. |
| M2 | Senior Manager / Group Manager | Senior or group manager; broadly comparable in scope to IC5 | One reported senior engineering-manager package reaches about $507,000, which is a single high submission rather than a band ceiling.Modeled from public manager submissions and the posted San Francisco senior solutions engineering manager base range of $244,000 to $336,000. |
| D1 | Director | Director of a global function or a major regional organisation | No Cloudflare-specific submission set exists at this layer; the row is a planning envelope built between the manager cohort and the proxy.Modeled between reported manager packages and disclosed executive pay, lifted by the 1.05 San Francisco factor. |
| D2 | Senior Director / Head | Senior director or head of a named function | Cloudflare publishes no compensation for any layer between the manager cohort and its named executive officers.Modeled; the equity component is the dominant term and is delivered as a multi-year award rather than an annual refresh. |
| VP | Vice President | Vice President of a global function at a comparable infrastructure vendor | Regional-head and non-named-officer C-suite pay is not publicly disclosed anywhere, so the spread on this row is deliberately wide.Modeled envelope of $650,000 to $1.6 million total on the national benchmark, lifted by the 1.05 San Francisco factor; equity is roughly 59 percent of the median package. |
| SVP | SVP / EVP / President | The layer immediately below the named executive officers disclosed in the proxy statement | Excluded from the range chart. Only named executive officers are disclosed, and their 2025 grant-date values run from $4.996 million to $58.251 million.Modeled envelope of $1.5 million to $8 million total on the national benchmark; the disclosed chief financial officer package of $10.742 million sits above the modeled median. |
Critical evidence warning
Cloudflare does not publish salary ranges, band minimums, band midpoints or a rating scale for any employee population, and it does not disclose city-level headcount. Every figure below the named executive officers is a third-party observation or a calibrated model around one. The reported rows are deepest at IC1 through IC5 in the United States and thinnest at the leadership rows and in Tokyo, where no Cloudflare-specific record was found at all.
Compensation by Band — San Francisco
Low / median / high annual values at 1.00× base and 1.00× total-compensation factors versus San Francisco. Total equals base plus bonus plus annualized equity.
| Band | Title | Base | Variable | Total TC | Equity |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| E0 | Intern / Graduate trainee 0–1 years · reported | $77K – $104K | — | $99K $84K – $114K | $8K |
| IC1 | Associate / Software Engineer I 0–2 years · reported | $116K – $157K | — | $151K $128K – $174K | $15K |
| IC2 | Software Engineer II 2–4 years · reported | $128K – $173K | — | $173K $147K – $199K | $23K |
| IC3 | Senior Software Engineer 4–7 years · reported | $149K – $201K | — | $210K $179K – $242K | $35K |
| IC4 | Staff / Lead Engineer 7–10 years · reported | $185K – $251K | — | $305K $259K – $351K | $87K |
| IC5 | Principal / Senior Staff Engineer 10+ years · reported | $211K – $286K | — | $364K $310K – $419K | $115K |
| M1 | Engineering / Functional Manager 7–12 years · modeled | $187K – $254K | 5% | $285K $242K – $327K | $53K |
| M2 | Senior Manager / Group Manager 10–15 years · modeled | $205K – $278K | 10% | $335K $285K – $385K | $69K |
| D1 | Director 12–18 years · modeled | $232K – $314K | 10% | $420K $357K – $483K | $120K |
| D2 | Senior Director / Head 15–20 years · modeled | $263K – $356K | 12% | $525K $446K – $604K | $178K |
| VP | Vice President 18+ years · modeled | $335K – $453K | 15% | $1.10M $937K – $1.27M | $650K |
| SVP | SVP / EVP / President 20+ years · modeled | $469K – $634K | 20% | $4.20M $3.57M – $4.83M | $3.54M |
Total Compensation Range by Band
Total compensation in San Francisco across the employee bands. Proxy-disclosed executive cohorts are excluded so the employee bands stay readable.
Global Footprint & Pay Arbitrage
Cloudflare reported 5,156 employees at 31 December 2025 and, after eliminating more than 1,100 roles in May 2026, describes itself as more than 3,800 team members across 30 or more countries with 12 hubs. San Francisco is the pay anchor at 1.05 times the United States national benchmark, and every other market is calibrated against it.
Office and market catalogue — calibration factors versus San Francisco
| Location | Likely office profile | Presence | Base | TC |
|---|---|---|---|---|
San Francisco United States · USD | Headquarters, engineering, product, corporate and go-to-market | Headquarters identified in the Form 10-K | 1.00× | 1.00× |
Austin United States · USD | Largest secondary United States hub, engineering, support and go-to-market | Hub identified in the Form 10-K | 0.86× | 0.86× |
New York United States · USD | Go-to-market, corporate and engineering | Employee submissions and H-1B worksite records | 0.95× | 0.95× |
Seattle and Bellevue United States · USD | Engineering and go-to-market, thin public sample | Employee submissions and H-1B worksite records | 0.93× | 0.93× |
Washington, DC United States · USD | Public sector, policy and go-to-market | Employee submissions and H-1B worksite records | 0.87× | 0.87× |
Champaign United States · USD | Engineering and research, the lowest-priced United States location evidenced | H-1B worksite record only, ten historical positions | 0.71× | 0.71× |
Bengaluru India · INR | Engineering, product and support; a product hub rather than a delivery centre | Employee salary submissions | 0.32× | 0.32× |
London United Kingdom · GBP | Largest EMEA hub, engineering, go-to-market and corporate | Hub identified in the Form 10-K | 0.74× | 0.74× |
Lisbon Portugal · EUR | Major EMEA technical and support hub, the lowest-priced European market evidenced | Hub identified in the Form 10-K | 0.42× | 0.42× |
Munich Germany · EUR | DACH go-to-market and engineering, very thin public sample | Employee salary submissions | 0.78× | 0.78× |
Sydney Australia · AUD | APAC hub weighted to go-to-market, solutions engineering and support | Third-party salary records | 0.76× | 0.76× |
Singapore Singapore · SGD | APAC hub, go-to-market, engineering and operations | Hub identified in the Form 10-K | 0.56× | 0.56× |
Tokyo Japan · JPY | Japan go-to-market and customer-facing roles | No Cloudflare-specific salary record found; modeled market | 0.67× | 0.67× |
Toronto Canada · CAD | Canadian engineering and go-to-market | Employee salary submissions, sparse | 0.64× | 0.64× |
Mexico City Mexico · MXN | LATAM go-to-market, solutions engineering and support | Employee salary submissions, sales roles only | 0.43× | 0.43× |
Cloudflare does not publish employee headcount by city, so this catalogue cannot rank offices by size. The Form 10-K identifies substantial operations in the United States and international hubs including London, Lisbon, Singapore and Austin, with San Francisco as headquarters; Champaign and Brooklyn appear only in the visa record, and Tokyo only as a market.
San Francisco anchor medians — the basis of every modeled cell
| Band | Base | Stock | Bonus | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| E0 | $90K | $8K | $0 | $99K |
| IC1 | $137K | $15K | $0 | $151K |
| IC2 | $150K | $23K | $0 | $173K |
| IC3 | $175K | $35K | $0 | $210K |
| IC4 | $218K | $87K | $0 | $305K |
| IC5 | $249K | $115K | $200 | $364K |
- The San Francisco column is the anchor. IC1 through IC5 medians are the Levels.fyi United States software-engineering medians multiplied by the 1.05 San Francisco factor the bundle calibrates from a roughly $245,000 city median and the top United States pay zone in Cloudflare job postings.
- The reported anchor is unusually clean because Cloudflare packages reconcile exactly: base plus annualized equity plus a zero bonus equals the reported total at L1 through L4, and adds a $200 bonus at L5.
- Austin is the second-deepest United States sample at 0.90 of the national benchmark, and it is also the second-largest H-1B worksite with 231 historical positions at a $130,000 median, so the discount to San Francisco is visible in two independent datasets.
- Champaign at 0.75 of the national benchmark is the lowest-priced United States location evidenced, on a very thin ten-position H-1B record, and Brooklyn appears in the visa data at a $270,000 median across four positions without a corresponding office.
- Bengaluru at 0.34 of the national benchmark is the largest discount in the table, but Cloudflare runs it as a product and engineering hub rather than an offshore delivery centre, so the classic onsite-versus-offshore allowance economics do not apply.
Model rules
- Every modeled cell is the San Francisco anchor median multiplied by the city factor and then by the 25 August 2026 European Central Bank foreign-exchange snapshot.
- City factors are the bundle's own calibrations divided by the 1.05 San Francisco factor, so that San Francisco reads as 1.00 and the remaining markets keep their relative spacing.
- Base and total use the same factor in every city, because the bundle evidences a flat multiplier rather than a level-dependent one. The junior-to-senior compression fields are therefore deliberately omitted rather than fabricated.
- A total compensation cell is base plus target cash plus annualized equity. Sign-on payments, relocation, one-time retention awards and any notional employer benefit load are excluded, so total reconciles to its own components rather than to an employer-cost figure.
- Munich is deliberately modeled below its own submissions. Two sparse German records report roughly €159,000 at L3 and €192,000 at L4, which would imply near-United States pay; the 0.82 national factor moderates that outlier rather than treating it as a market rate.
- Tokyo carries no Cloudflare-specific salary record at all and is a pure model at 0.70 of the national benchmark. It should be read as a planning envelope, not a benchmark.
Variable Pay & Annual Cash Incentive
Cloudflare is close to a pure base-plus-equity payer. Public technical submissions record a zero cash bonus at every individual-contributor level, and the 2025 proxy confirms that the named executive officers had no annual cash bonus or short-term incentive plan at all. The one population with genuine cash variability is sales, where quota commission can put roughly 35 to 55 percent of on-target earnings at risk.
| Band | Target | Mechanism | Recent payout |
|---|---|---|---|
E0 Intern / Graduate trainee | 0% of base | Hourly or monthly stipend plus reported housing and relocation allowances; no bonus concept. | Not publicly disclosed |
IC1 Associate / Software Engineer I | 0% of base | Base plus restricted stock units; no cash bonus recorded in public submissions. | Not publicly disclosed |
IC2 Software Engineer II | 0% of base | Base plus restricted stock units; no cash bonus recorded in public submissions. | Not publicly disclosed |
IC3 Senior Software Engineer | 0% of base | Base plus restricted stock units; no cash bonus recorded in public submissions. | Not publicly disclosed |
IC4 Staff / Lead Engineer | 0% of base | Base plus restricted stock units; occasional spot or retention awards may exist but are not published. | Not publicly disclosed |
IC5 Principal / Senior Staff Engineer | Effectively 0% of base | The reported L5 cohort shows a $200 median cash bonus, which is a rounding artefact rather than a plan. | $200 median reported cash bonus at the national L5 benchmark |
M1 Engineering / Functional Manager | 5% of base, modeled | Role-specific incentive where one exists; Cloudflare publishes no manager bonus rule. | Not publicly disclosed |
M2 Senior Manager / Group Manager | 10% of base, modeled | Role-specific incentive where one exists; Cloudflare publishes no manager bonus rule. | Not publicly disclosed |
D1 Director | 10% of base, modeled | Leadership incentive plus equity; not publicly standardized. | Not publicly disclosed |
D2 Senior Director / Head | 12% of base, modeled | Leadership incentive plus equity; not publicly standardized. | Not publicly disclosed |
VP Vice President | 15% of base, modeled | Negotiated leadership package in which equity is dominant. | Not publicly disclosed |
SVP SVP / EVP / President | 20% of base, modeled | Negotiated executive package; the named officers above this layer had no cash plan. | Not publicly disclosed |
Sales Account executive and enterprise account executive | 35% to 55% of on-target earnings | Quota commission with accelerators and deal or strategic measures, trued up monthly or quarterly depending on plan. | RepVue reports enterprise account executive annual variable of $87,000 to $195,750 against a median on-target package of about $290,000 |
NEO Named executive officers, 2025 | 0% of base | No annual cash bonus or short-term incentive programme was in force. | Every named executive officer received $0 of cash incentive in 2025 |
Executive incentive targets — percent of salary
Named-executive outcomes
| Executive | Target | Paid | Attainment |
|---|---|---|---|
| Matthew Prince | $0 | $0 | No short-term incentive plan in force for 2025 |
| Michelle Zatlyn | $0 | $0 | No short-term incentive plan in force for 2025 |
| Thomas Seifert | $0 | $0 | No short-term incentive plan in force for 2025 |
| Douglas Kramer | $0 | $0 | No short-term incentive plan in force for 2025 |
Employee payout timing and history
No reliable company-wide target-versus-actual cash-incentive payout series exists for 2023 through 2026, and none is invented here. For the technical population the economically variable component is equity price and vesting, not a bonus, which is why a Cloudflare offer should be compared on base plus annualized stock rather than on base plus a bonus percentage.
Sales and special incentives
Sales is the only population where cash variability is material and it is not standardized in public data. Reported United States account executive packages run $188,000 to $270,000 by level with a median around $240,000, enterprise account executive median on-target earnings are about $290,000 with reported annual variable of $87,000 to $195,750, a posted Paris senior named account executive role quotes €169,000 to €232,000 on-target, and Australian account executive submissions span A$157,000 to A$326,000. Cloudflare publishes no universal formula, no weightings and no accelerator schedule.
Equity — RSUs, PSUs, Options & ESPP
Cloudflare is a United States issuer, so employee equity means restricted stock units, performance stock units and employee stock purchase plan buying rather than options. The careers page describes every employee as an owner of company stock, but Cloudflare publishes no minimum eligible band, no standard grant table and no refresh guarantee, so broad eligibility and equal grants are very different things.
- Cloudflare does not disclose a pool utilisation percentage in a directly comparable form, and this report does not compute one. Reserve shares, outstanding awards, exercised awards, forfeitures, the annual Form S-8 additions and the 2026 share-class change all use different denominators, so a single percentage would be misleading rather than informative.
- On 26 February 2026 Cloudflare registered a further 17,594,303 shares under the 2019 Plan and 3,518,860 under the ESPP, so the 31 December 2025 availability figures are a floor rather than the current reserve.
- Unrecognised restricted and performance stock expense was $967.9 million at 31 December 2025 and had risen to $1.139 billion by 30 June 2026, expected to be recognised over roughly three years, which is a direct signal of forward grant weight rather than of past cost.
- FY2025 forfeitures of 1.750 million units against 4.884 million granted and 4.665 million vested are the only public window onto how much unvested equity leaves the company each year.
Equity plan capacity and grant activity
Vesting — common reported employee schedule
The four-year schedule shown is the ordinary employee pattern described in the Form 10-K and in public employee reports, commonly 25 percent at the first anniversary and quarterly thereafter. Executive schedules are deliberately different: the founders' 2025 restricted awards vest quarterly over five years while the Chief Financial Officer and former Chief Legal Officer awards vested quarterly over a single year, so seniority does not mean a longer or shorter horizon in any predictable direction.
Eligibility by hierarchy level
- Modeled annual grant values by band run about $0 to $20,000 at E0, $40,000 to $80,000 at IC1, $70,000 to $120,000 at IC2, $120,000 to $220,000 at IC3, $280,000 to $450,000 at IC4 and $400,000 to $700,000 at IC5, then $300,000 to $600,000 at M1, $500,000 to $1.0 million at M2, $750,000 to $2.0 million at Director, $1.25 million to $4.0 million at Senior Director, $2 million to $8 million at Vice President and $5 million upward at SVP. These are planning envelopes, not a Cloudflare grant table.
- New-hire grants are the reliable part. Refresher and retention grants are described as possible rather than scheduled at every band below Director, and Cloudflare publishes no refresh cadence.
- The 2026 restructuring temporarily improved equity treatment for departing employees: base pay through year-end, United States healthcare support through year-end, equity vesting through 15 August and prorated vesting even where the one-year cliff had not been reached. Those were one-time protections and do not amend the standard plan for continuing employees.
- Reported annualized equity in public packages runs about $13,804 at L1, $21,797 at L2, $33,479 at L3, $82,958 at L4 and $109,930 at L5 on the national benchmark, so the jump between L3 and L4 is where equity stops being a supplement and starts being the package.
Indicative annual grant value by band — San Francisco
| Band | Annual value (USD) | Median | Shares at $277.58 |
|---|---|---|---|
| E0 | $6K – $11K | $8K | ~23–38 |
| IC1 | $11K – $18K | $15K | ~39–65 |
| IC2 | $17K – $29K | $23K | ~62–103 |
| IC3 | $26K – $44K | $35K | ~95–159 |
| IC4 | $65K – $109K | $87K | ~235–392 |
| IC5 | $87K – $144K | $115K | ~312–520 |
| M1 | $40K – $66K | $53K | ~143–239 |
| M2 | $52K – $87K | $69K | ~187–312 |
| D1 | $90K – $150K | $120K | ~323–539 |
| D2 | $134K – $223K | $178K | ~481–802 |
| VP | $487K – $812K | $650K | ~1,755–2,925 |
| SVP | $2.65M – $4.42M | $3.54M | ~9,560–15,934 |
Annualized planning value (±25%), not the face value of every new-hire grant. Share equivalents use the $277.58 reference price at 25 August 2026 close and ignore plan valuation rules and PSU performance. Highlighted rows are disclosed grant-date stock awards.
Named executive target equity
| Executive | Target | Units / structure |
|---|---|---|
Matthew Prince Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer | $58.251 million of 2025 grant-date fair value | 259,672 restricted stock units on a five-year quarterly service vest worth $37.468 million at grant, plus 175,111 performance stock units worth $20.783 million across six share-price tranches. Marked at the $277.58 close the two awards were worth about $72.080 million and $48.607 million. |
Michelle Zatlyn Co-founder, President and Chief Operating Officer | $58.251 million of 2025 grant-date fair value | An identical 259,672 restricted and 175,111 performance unit package on the same five-year and six-tranche terms, which is why the two founder totals differ only by perquisites. |
Thomas Seifert Chief Financial Officer | $9.992 million of 2025 grant-date fair value | 69,246 restricted stock units vesting quarterly over one year, marked at about $19.221 million at the $277.58 close. No performance units were granted. |
Douglas Kramer Former Chief Legal Officer | $4.996 million of 2025 grant-date fair value | 34,623 restricted stock units vesting quarterly over one year, marked at about $9.611 million at the $277.58 close. |
Executive Compensation
Cloudflare's 2025 executive programme had no cash incentive component at all. Every named executive officer received $0 of annual bonus, and the entire variable opportunity was long-term restricted and performance stock. The result is a chief executive total dominated by a single grant year, which is why the 2025, 2024 and 2023 figures differ by more than an order of magnitude.
Reading the package
Salary was about 0.9 percent of Matthew Prince's 2025 reported total, cash incentive was exactly zero and stock awards were about 96.2 percent. The remaining 2.9 percent was perquisites, principally about $1.349 million of incremental personal-aircraft use and $413,700 of security costs. Because the stock figure is a grant-date accounting value covering a five-year restricted award and a six-tranche performance award, none of it is money received in 2025; the SEC compensation-actually-paid measure for the same year was $97.692 million, reflecting year-end fair-value movement.
These comparisons are dominated by grant timing rather than by pay philosophy. Cloudflare's 2025 package sits above Datadog, which included $25.832 million of stock and a $777,000 cash incentive, and well above Fastly, whose chief executive served a partial year. It sits far below CrowdStrike's exceptional FY2026 award. Zscaler's $29,753 is not a low package but a year in which no new grant was made to a founder who already holds a large stake, and reading it as a peer data point would be a category error.
Named Executive Officers & Board
Cloudflare's leadership disclosure stops at the named executive officer set. Four officers appear in the 2025 compensation tables, a fifth appears only through Section 16 filings, and no regional head or non-named C-suite role is priced anywhere in public sources.
The two co-founder packages are effectively one decision taken twice: Prince and Zatlyn received identical 259,672-unit restricted awards and identical 175,111-unit performance awards, so their totals diverge only through perquisites, $1.762 million against $1.257 million. The officer packages are built on a different clock. Seifert's $9.992 million and Kramer's $4.996 million awards both vest quarterly over a single year, which produces steady realisation and explains the regular pattern of withholding and plan sales in their Form 4 record.
Board compensation framework
| Element | Amount | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Annual nonemployee director equity award | $206,750 | Delivered as restricted stock units, which makes the board's pay move with the same share price as employee equity. |
| Initial award for a newly appointed director | $400,000 | Roughly double the annual award, which is why 2025 totals for Stacey Cunningham at $427,409 and Karim Lakhani at $422,854 sit well above the continuing directors. |
| Continuing director 2025 totals | $242,659 to $258,659 | Scott Sandell $242,659, Katrin Suder $249,659, Mark Hawkins $256,659 and Carl Ledbetter $258,659, so the spread across the continuing board is under $16,000. |
| Highest 2025 director total | $631,975 | John Graham-Cumming, whose package reflects a former-employee and director compensation mix rather than the standard nonemployee schedule. |
| Employee directors | No additional compensation | Prince and Zatlyn receive nothing for board service beyond their executive packages. |
Cloudflare's board pay is almost entirely equity, which mirrors the employee design. Because the annual award is a fixed dollar value converted into units, a falling share price increases the unit count rather than cutting the reported figure, so director totals are a poor proxy for shareholder outcomes in any single year.
Regional heads and other officers
Janel Riley, the Chief Accounting Officer, is a Section 16 officer whose compensation is not disclosed; her August 2026 withholding of 4,135 shares at $315.78 is the only public quantification of her equity. Regional-head compensation and non-named C-suite pay are Not publicly disclosed, and nothing in the VP or SVP rows of this report is a Cloudflare figure.
Insider Trades — SEC Forms 3/4/5
Cloudflare is a United States-listed Delaware corporation, so insider activity is reported on SEC Forms 3, 4 and 5 and, for intended sales, Form 144. The record below covers June to August 2026 and mixes three economically different events: open-market sales, share withholding on vesting, and option exercises or award conversions. Reading them as one signal is the most common mistake made with this data.
| Date | Person | Transaction | Shares | Price | Value |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026-08-19 | Michelle Zatlyn Co-founder, President and Chief Operating Officer | Conversion Award conversion reported on Form 4 at no consideration, covering 198,018 shares against 99,009 underlying. | 198,018 | — | $0 |
| 2026-08-17 | Thomas Seifert Chief Financial Officer | Sale Reported across multiple lots between $305.73 and $314.61; the price shown is the midpoint of the disclosed range. | 10,000 | $310.17 | $3.10M |
| 2026-08-15 | Matthew Prince Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer | Withholding Shares withheld to cover tax on vesting. This is not an open-market sale and carries no signalling content. | 19,937 | $315.78 | $6.30M |
| 2026-08-15 | Michelle Zatlyn Co-founder, President and Chief Operating Officer | Withholding Tax withholding on the same vesting date as the chief executive, consistent with the identical award terms. | 23,157 | $315.78 | $7.31M |
| 2026-08-15 | Thomas Seifert Chief Financial Officer | Withholding Tax withholding on a quarterly tranche of the one-year 2025 award. | 2,944 | $315.78 | $930K |
| 2026-08-15 | Janel Riley Chief Accounting Officer | Withholding The only public quantification of an officer whose compensation is not otherwise disclosed. | 4,135 | $315.78 | $1.31M |
| 2026-08-05 | Matthew Prince Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer | Sale Open-market sale reported on Form 4 and indexed by OpenInsider. | 33,631 | $296.10 | $9.96M |
| 2026-08-04 | Matthew Prince Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer | Sale The largest single reported sale in the window. | 51,034 | $297.58 | $15.19M |
| 2026-08-04 | Matthew Prince Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer | Sale A second lot reported on the same day at a marginally different price. | 20,101 | $296.89 | $5.97M |
| 2026-08-04 | Thomas Seifert Chief Financial Officer | Exercise Option exercise at a $44.72 strike against a market price above $290, so the value shown is exercise cost rather than proceeds. | 55,000 | $44.72 | $2.46M |
| 2026-08-03 | Matthew Prince Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer | Sale Part of a sustained August sequence across four consecutive trading days. | 52,383 | $283.42 | $14.85M |
| 2026-07-17 | Thomas Seifert Chief Financial Officer | Sale A regular 10,000-share disposal consistent with a scheduled plan. | 10,000 | $276.92 | $2.77M |
| 2026-07-13 | Michelle Zatlyn Co-founder, President and Chief Operating Officer | Sale The largest reported disposal by value in the window. | 99,064 | $276.78 | $27.42M |
| 2026-07-07 | Carl Ledbetter Nonemployee director | Sale Director sale, likely settling vested annual restricted stock units. | 5,000 | $268.11 | $1.34M |
| 2026-07-06 | John Graham-Cumming Director and former employee | Sale The smallest reported transaction in the window. | 2,520 | $247.28 | $623K |
| 2026-07-02 | Matthew Prince Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer | Sale Sold about 20 percent below the August prices, which is the clearest illustration of why sale timing is not a valuation signal. | 86,014 | $245.31 | $21.10M |
| 2026-07-01 | Matthew Prince Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer | Sale Opened the July sequence at the start of the quarter. | 71,174 | $247.28 | $17.60M |
| 2026-06-17 | Thomas Seifert Chief Financial Officer | Sale Executed under a Rule 10b5-1 plan adopted on 20 November 2025, roughly seven months before the trade. | 10,000 | $232.39 | $2.32M |
| 2026-06-16 | Michelle Zatlyn Co-founder, President and Chief Operating Officer | Sale The lowest realised price in the window, about 28 percent below the August withholding mark. | 76,923 | $228.25 | $17.56M |
Reading guide
Benefits & Perks
Cloudflare publishes one global benefits narrative on its careers page and no country rewards portals, so the benefit picture is broad but shallow: the programme names are official, the amounts almost never are. The regional rows below separate what Cloudflare itself states from the statutory baseline that fills the gap, and never presents the second as the first.
United States
- Retirement — 401(k) plan with no employer match to date. The proxy states that no employer matching contributions had been made to the plan as at the disclosure date. That is unusual for a company of this profile and materially changes the value of a Cloudflare offer against a peer paying a 3 to 6 percent match. [official]
- Medical — Medical, dental and vision cover plus travel insurance. An employee assistance programme and a flexible spending account are offered alongside. Carrier, deductible, premium share and any health savings account contribution are not disclosed. [official]
- Protection — Life, accidental death and dismemberment, short-term and long-term disability. Cover multiples and waiting periods are not published. [official]
- Leave — Take-what-you-need vacation. Subject to satisfactory performance and local rules. Because there is no accrual, there is also no payout on exit and no published usage statistic, so the real value depends entirely on team norms. [official]
- Family — Up to 16 paid weeks of bonding leave. A global policy applied for qualifying new parents, with local statutory rights stacking on top where they are more generous. [official]
Global programs
- Equity — Every employee described as an owner of company stock. The clearest statement of pay philosophy Cloudflare makes. It does not mean equal grants: award size, refresh frequency and any minimum eligible band are not published. [official]
- Leave — Take-what-you-need vacation. Subject to satisfactory performance and local rules in every market. [official]
- Family — Up to 16 paid weeks of bonding leave for qualifying new parents. A global floor, with local statutory rights adding on top. [official]
- Medical — Healthcare, life insurance and short- and long-term disability. Named globally. Insurer, deductible and coverage amounts vary by country and are disclosed nowhere. [official]
- Wellbeing — Mental-health, childcare and family-forming support. Vendors, session limits and reimbursement caps are not disclosed. [official]
- Commuter — Public-transport commuter support. Availability and tax treatment vary by location. [official]
- Work model — In-hub, hybrid and distributed roles. Team and country determine the eligible cadence, and 12 hubs are listed on the careers page across 30 or more countries. [official]
- Severance — May 2026 restructuring terms. Departing employees received base pay through year-end, United States healthcare support through year-end, equity vesting through 15 August and prorated vesting even where the one-year cliff had not been reached. This was a one-time package, not a standing policy. [official]
Benefit fields not publicly quantified
Cloudflare publishes no country rewards portal, so almost every amount in a Cloudflare benefit is Not publicly disclosed: no insurer, no premium share, no pension percentage, no leave-day count, no allowance schedule. Where a number appears above it is either a Cloudflare statement of policy or a government rule, and the two are labelled separately. This section is compensation research rather than legal advice, and statutory caps and eligibility change.
Performance Review & Pay Progression
Cloudflare publishes six named Capabilities and nothing else. There is no public rating scale, no calibration curve, no appraisal calendar for the workforce and no promotion grid, which makes Cloudflare one of the least legible companies in this set for anyone trying to forecast a raise.
Not publicly disclosed
Modeled promotion planning timeline
| Band | Years to next scope | Promotion hike | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| E0 | Conversion offer at the end of the programme, with no universal uplift | Not disclosed | Modeled planning interval |
| IC1 | 1.5–3 years to IC2 for an 8 to 15 percent base step | Not disclosed | Modeled planning interval |
| IC2 | 2–3 years to IC3 for a 10 to 18 percent base step | Not disclosed | Modeled planning interval |
| IC3 | 2–4 years to IC4 for a 10 to 20 percent base step and a material equity reset | Not disclosed | Modeled planning interval |
| IC4 | 3–5 years to IC5, where the retention grant matters more than the base step | Not disclosed | Modeled planning interval |
| IC5 | No published rung above IC5; the next step is scope or a leadership move | Not disclosed | Modeled planning interval |
| M1 | 2–4 years to M2 for an 8 to 18 percent base step plus equity | Not disclosed | Modeled planning interval |
| M2 | 3–5 years to Director for a 10 to 25 percent base step plus multi-year equity | Not disclosed | Modeled planning interval |
| D1 | 3–5 years to Senior Director where an opening exists | Not disclosed | Modeled planning interval |
| D2 | Highly selective; the step to Vice President is negotiated rather than scheduled | Not disclosed | Modeled planning interval |
| VP | No published progression; equity dominates any move above this layer | Not disclosed | Modeled planning interval |
| SVP | Appointed rather than promoted | Not disclosed | Modeled planning interval |
One low-confidence employee report describes compensation conversations around March and September for eligible employees, and a separate anecdote suggests a business development representative promotion typically requires several fully ramped quota quarters and often 12 to 15 months. Neither is verified policy and neither should be planned around. The one structural fact that is verified is that the May 2026 organisation redesign removed about 20 percent of roles, which changes the number of openings available for internal progression far more than any rating framework would.
Pay progression evidence
Modeled progression, not Cloudflare policy: E0 to IC1 is a conversion offer with no universal uplift; IC1 to IC2 typically takes 1.5 to 3 years for an 8 to 15 percent base increase, where the new equity grant usually matters more than the base step; IC2 to IC3 takes 2 to 3 years for 10 to 18 percent; IC3 to IC4 takes 2 to 4 years for 10 to 20 percent plus a material equity step-up; IC4 to IC5 takes 3 to 5 years for 8 to 18 percent where the retention grant dominates; the move from IC4 or IC5 into M1 is a lateral scope change rather than an automatic raise; M1 to M2 takes 2 to 4 years for 8 to 18 percent plus equity; and M2 to Director takes 3 to 5 years for 10 to 25 percent plus a multi-year award. Director to Vice President is highly selective and negotiated rather than scheduled.
H-1B / LCA Visa Footprint — United States
Cloudflare is a modest H-1B sponsor by large-technology standards, filing roughly 100 to 130 labour condition applications a year concentrated in San Francisco and Austin. The 2025 count is genuinely disputed between sources, and this report reports the range rather than collapsing it. Labour condition application wages are base salary only, so they exclude restricted stock units entirely and cannot be compared with a total compensation figure.
Dataset summary
| Dataset | Result | Interpretation |
|---|---|---|
| Ellis visa-sponsorship profile, 2025 | 103 applications at a $150,000 median | Split 27 new employment, 29 transfers and 46 renewals or other. Deduplicated case methodology. |
| MyVisaJobs employer profile, 2025 | 126 applications at an approximately $170,389 average | 38 labour certifications reported in one view. Uses a different fiscal or calendar boundary and a different record method. |
| WarnTracker FY2025 to FY2026 subset | 46 records with a $160,000 median | 25th percentile $140,000, 75th percentile $185,000 and 90th percentile $230,000. A subset rather than a total, so useful for percentile shape only. |
| Ellis, 2024 | 122 applications and 30 PERM filings | The company history median is not isolated by year in this source. |
| H1BData aggregation, 2024 | 128 records at an approximately $156,560 median | A third record count for the same year, which is why the 2025 discrepancy should not be read as an anomaly. |
| Ellis, 2023 | 86 applications and 29 PERM filings | The lowest of the three years, before the 2024 and 2025 hiring peak. |
City-level H-1B wage history
| City | P25 | Median | P75 | Records |
|---|---|---|---|---|
San Francisco, California Headquarters and by far the deepest worksite record. The $5,720,000 maximum in the historical aggregation is a data outlier and should not be read as a salary band. | $130K | $146,250 | $186K | 549 |
Austin, Texas The second-largest worksite, with a median about 11 percent below San Francisco, consistent with the 0.90 city factor used in the pay model. | $119K | $130,000 | $157K | 231 |
New York, New York A much smaller but higher-paid cohort, weighted to go-to-market and senior technical roles. | $145K | $170,000 | $200K | 31 |
Champaign, Illinois Engineering and research, and the lowest-paid worksite in the record on a very thin sample. | $119K | $119,000 | $155K | 10 |
Bellevue, Washington The Seattle-area record, sparse enough that the pay model treats it as a single calibration point. | $126K | $137,000 | $170K | 6 |
Washington, DC Public sector and policy roles, with a median matching New York on only four positions. | $150K | $170,000 | $195K | 4 |
Brooklyn, New York The highest median in the record on four positions, and a worksite with no corresponding office in this report's location table. | $230K | $270,000 | $325K | 4 |
All-years aggregates. P25/P75 are rounded reconstruction values marked modeled; medians and record counts are the stronger fields.
Selected title / worksite records
| Title | Worksite | Proffered wage | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Systems Engineer | Predominantly San Francisco | $150,000 median, $105,885 to $300,000 | The largest single title in the historical record at 141 positions, and the reason the company median sits near $150,000. |
| Software Engineer | San Francisco and Austin | $142,500 median, $96,616 to $195,000 | 114 positions. The median sits below the reported L2 base, which is what a base-only visa wage looks like against a package that includes equity. |
| Engineering Manager | San Francisco | $220,000 median, $131,560 to $302,500 | 31 positions and the highest-paid title in the record, above the modeled M1 anchor base of $220,500. |
| Senior Systems Engineer | San Francisco | $200,000 median, $160,000 to $245,000 | 23 positions, a $50,000 median step above the unqualified Systems Engineer title. |
| Analyst | Mixed United States worksites | $83,138 median, $70,720 to $95,555 | 50 positions and by far the lowest-paid title family, which drags the company-wide average below the engineering picture. |
| Solutions Engineer | Mixed United States worksites | $112,500 median, $90,000 to $190,000 | 18 positions. The wide spread reflects a customer-facing family whose real package includes quota-linked variable pay that the filing does not capture. |
| Systems Reliability Engineer | San Francisco | $155,000 median, $120,000 to $190,000 | 11 positions, priced above general software engineering, which is consistent with Cloudflare's network-operations orientation. |
| Data Engineer | Mixed United States worksites | $140,000 median, $127,000 to $200,000 | 13 positions with the tightest lower bound of any technical title in the record. |
Reading the data correctly
- Labour condition application wages are the offered or required base wage. They exclude restricted stock units, which are the majority of a senior Cloudflare package, so a $150,000 visa median is not a $150,000 total compensation median.
- The Ellis title and worksite tables cover historical positions across many years, not 2025 hires alone, so they describe Cloudflare's cumulative sponsorship profile rather than current offer levels.
- Counting conventions differ across sources: some count labour condition applications, some count positions, some count amendments, some use fiscal years and some use calendar years, and some deduplicate cases. That is the whole of the 103 versus 126 discrepancy.
- Labour condition application certification, USCIS petition approval and PERM labour certification are three distinct processes. Conflating them is the most common error made with this data, and it is why no approval rate is quoted here.
- The $5,720,000 San Francisco maximum in the historical aggregation is an artefact rather than a salary and has been excluded from every interpretation in this report.
- The May 2026 reduction of more than 1,100 roles postdates most of this record, so 2026 filing volumes should not be extrapolated from the 2024 and 2025 peak.
Key Nuances & Insights
Levels.fyi records a $0 annual bonus at L1 through L4 and $200 at L5, and the 2025 proxy confirms that every named executive officer received $0 of cash incentive under no short-term plan. A candidate comparing a Cloudflare offer with a peer offer that carries a 10 to 15 percent target bonus is comparing two different instruments, and the Cloudflare package has to make it up in stock or lose.
The proxy states that no employer matching contributions had been made to the United States 401(k) plan to date. Against a peer paying 50 percent on the first 6 percent, that is roughly $10,000 a year of foregone value at the compensation cap, and it is the single most negotiable-adjacent fact in the benefits picture.
National reported base rises only from $166,708 to $207,750 between L3 and L4, but annualized equity goes from $33,479 to $82,958 and total from $200,187 to $290,708. Almost half the ladder's lifetime value change happens at one rung, and it happens in stock rather than salary.
A reported United States engineering-manager package of about $271,000 sits below the reported IC4 total of $290,708. M1 is comparable to IC4 in scope and M2 to IC5, so the management track at Cloudflare is a scope decision rather than a compensation upgrade, at least until the Director layer where equity resets.
Matthew Prince's Summary Compensation Table total was $60.551 million in 2025, $2.081 million in 2024 and $20.515 million in 2023. The 2025 figure carries a five-year restricted award and a six-tranche performance award granted in one year. The compensation-actually-paid measure for the same year was $97.692 million, a third number describing the same events.
The 175,111-unit awards vest against a 90-day volume-weighted average price reaching $156, $203, $263, $343, $446 and $579. There is no revenue, margin or retention gate. At the $277.58 August 2026 mark, the first three tranches are in reach and the top two require the shares to roughly double again.
The classic offshore pattern, where a delivery centre sits at 0.16 of the anchor at entry level and 0.44 at principal level, does not appear in Cloudflare's data. The evidenced factor is flat at about one-third of the United States benchmark across the whole ladder, because Cloudflare runs India as a product hub rather than a utilisation-priced delivery centre. This report therefore applies one factor per city and omits the junior-to-senior interpolation entirely.
Two sparse German submissions report roughly €159,000 at L3 and €192,000 at L4, which would place Munich at or above United States pay. The model uses 0.82 of the national benchmark instead. A reader negotiating in Munich should know both numbers exist and that one of them rests on a handful of records.
Enterprise account executive on-target earnings run about $290,000 with reported annual variable of $87,000 to $195,750, so roughly 35 to 55 percent sits against quota. Comparing a sales offer on base alone will understate it by nearly half, and comparing an engineering offer on base alone will understate it by a third at senior levels for the opposite reason.
Cloudflare says every employee is an owner of company stock and the plan permits wide participation with 84.2 million shares available. It publishes no minimum eligible band, no standard grant value, no refresh cadence and no ESPP discount percentage. The philosophy is disclosed; the entitlement is not.
Departing employees in May 2026 received base pay through year-end, healthcare support through year-end, equity vesting through 15 August and prorated vesting even without reaching the one-year cliff. Cliff waivers of that kind are rare. They were a one-time protection for that action and do not amend the plan for anyone still employed.
Reported transaction prices run from $228.25 on 16 June 2026 to $315.78 on 15 August 2026. Matthew Prince sold at $245.31 on 2 July and at $297.58 on 4 August. That volatility is the employee's risk too, since it is the same instrument that replaces the missing bonus.
The $156,306 proxy median sits between the reported L2 total of $165,047 and the L1 total of $143,875. For a company of about 5,000 people that is a strong signal of a heavily technical, heavily United States workforce with no large low-wage population to pull the median down.
Every pay observation here was collected against a company of 5,156 people. The May 2026 action removed more than 1,100 roles, about 20 percent, with charges of up to $165 million. Cloudflare said it was a redesign rather than a cost-cutting exercise, but the practical effect on internal progression is fewer openings above every rung.
Research control
Against the infrastructure and security peers named in the bundle, Cloudflare's distinguishing feature is structural rather than positional. Datadog pays its chief executive $27.055 million including a $777,000 cash incentive, CrowdStrike granted $247.579 million in an exceptional FY2026 award year, Fastly paid $6.798 million to a partial-year chief executive, and Zscaler's $29,753 reflects a founder who received no new grant at all. Cloudflare's $60.551 million sits above Datadog and Fastly and far below CrowdStrike, but the more useful comparison is that Cloudflare runs no short-term cash incentive plan at any level of the company, which none of those peers can be assumed to share.
Evidence classification
| Label | Meaning | Examples and permitted use |
|---|---|---|
| official | A Cloudflare filing, an official benefits or careers page statement, a Cloudflare job posting, or a government rule. | Executive pay, board pay, equity plan terms, share counts, headcount, revenue, the named benefit programmes and every statutory baseline. |
| reported | Employee-submitted pay, a third-party salary record or a labour condition application wage. | The E0 through IC5 anchor medians, the city calibration anchors, sales on-target earnings and every H-1B wage figure. |
| modeled | The San Francisco anchor median multiplied by a city factor and by the 25 August 2026 foreign-exchange snapshot, inside a stated planning envelope. | The M1 through SVP rows, every non-anchor city cell, and the modeled bonus targets above IC5. |
| npd | Not publicly disclosed in any source reviewed for this report. | Attrition, city headcount, the ESPP discount rate, benefit amounts outside the statutory baselines, rating scales, hike percentages and the H-1B approval rate. |
Explicit “Not publicly disclosed” index
Known gaps and diligence before relying on a cell
- 1The 2025 H-1B filing count is genuinely disputed at 103 against 126 between Ellis and MyVisaJobs, and the reported wage statistic is a $150,000 median in one source and a $170,389 average in another. Both are carried here as a range rather than reconciled to a single number.
- 2Current headcount cannot be stated precisely. The Form 10-K gives 5,156 at 31 December 2025 and the careers page gives more than 3,800 in August 2026 after a reduction of over 1,100 roles. Both dates are shown and no exact current figure is created.
- 3The chief executive and other named executive officers are carried in the executive section only and are deliberately excluded from the band ladder. The SVP row is a modeled employee-layer envelope, not a proxy figure, and is marked as excluded from the range chart so that a $60.55 million founder package cannot distort the scale.
- 4Base and total factors are identical in every city and no junior-to-senior interpolation is applied, because the bundle evidences a flat multiplier per market. Inventing a compression curve would have produced offshore cells the data does not support.
- 5Total compensation is rebuilt from base plus target cash plus annualized equity so that the components reconcile. No notional employer benefit load is included anywhere in this report, and the reported anchor rows reconcile exactly because Cloudflare packages are base plus equity with a zero bonus.
- 6San Francisco is used as the anchor at 1.00 and the bundle's own city factors have been divided by its 1.05 San Francisco factor to preserve relative spacing. Every city therefore reads against San Francisco rather than against an unstated national benchmark.
- 7Manager and leadership rows carry the weakest evidence in the report. Levels.fyi manager pages disagree with one another because of sample and category definitions, and nothing at all is published between the manager cohort and the named executive officers.
- 8Tokyo has no Cloudflare-specific salary record of any kind and is a pure model. Champaign and Brooklyn appear only in visa data. Mexico City rests on a single sales-engineer submission.
- 9Cloudflare's founding year, its exact legal fiscal-year-end language and any geographic revenue split are not stated in the bundle, so they are omitted rather than filled in from general knowledge.
FX rates used — 1 USD equals, snapshot 2026-08-25
Single-date conversion layer for comparability; it ignores payroll-date FX, tax, purchasing power, benefits valuation and hedging. Compensation intelligence, not legal, tax, investment, immigration or employment advice.
Source register — 20 sources
| S1 | Cloudflare 2026 proxy statement · United States Securities and Exchange Commission · 2026-08-26. Named executive compensation, the pay ratio, board pay, equity plan terms, the co-founder performance awards and the confirmation that no cash incentive plan existed in 2025. |
| S2 | Cloudflare 2025 Form 10-K · United States Securities and Exchange Commission · 2026-08-26. Headcount of 5,156, FY2025 stock-based compensation of $451.454 million, grant and vesting activity, plan reserves and the identification of international hubs. |
| S3 | Cloudflare Q2 2026 Form 10-Q · United States Securities and Exchange Commission · 2026-08-26. Q2 2026 revenue of $696.1 million, the approximately 20 percent workforce reduction and restructuring charges of up to $165 million. |
| S4 | Cloudflare 2026 annual-meeting Form 8-K · United States Securities and Exchange Commission · 2026-08-26. Stockholder approval of the amended 2019 Equity Incentive Plan and ESPP on 30 June 2026 and the Class C split mechanics. |
| S5 | Cloudflare 2026 Form S-8 · United States Securities and Exchange Commission · 2026-08-26. The February 2026 registration of 17,594,303 additional plan shares and 3,518,860 ESPP shares. |
| S6 | Cloudflare careers and benefits pages · Cloudflare, Inc. · 2026-08-26. The global benefits list, the six Capabilities, the 3,800-plus headcount statement, the 12 hubs and the 30-plus countries figure. |
| S8 | Building for the future, 7 May 2026 · Cloudflare, Inc. · 2026-08-26. The elimination of more than 1,100 roles and the severance and equity-vesting terms for departing employees. |
| S10 | Cloudflare FY2025 and Q1 2026 results releases · Cloudflare, Inc. · 2026-08-26. FY2025 revenue of $2.168 billion, Q1 2026 revenue of $639.8 million and the initial restructuring charge estimate. |
| S11 | Levels.fyi Cloudflare salary records · Levels.fyi · 2026-08-26. United States L1 through L5 anchor medians and the direct city observations for Bengaluru, London, Lisbon, Munich, Singapore, Toronto and Mexico City. |
| S18 | RepVue Cloudflare account executive records · RepVue · 2026-08-26. Enterprise account executive on-target earnings of about $290,000 and annual variable of $87,000 to $195,750. |
| S19 | Glassdoor Cloudflare Australia salaries · Glassdoor · 2026-08-26. Sydney solutions engineer and account executive ranges used to calibrate the Australian factor. |
| S20 | Ellis Cloudflare visa-sponsorship profile · Ellis · 2026-08-26. 2023 to 2026 filing counts, title and worksite wage distributions, and the PERM certification rate that is often misread as an H-1B approval rate. |
| S23 | MyVisaJobs, H1BData and H1BGrader Cloudflare extracts · Third-party Department of Labor aggregators · 2026-08-26. The competing 2025 filing count of 126 at an approximately $170,389 average and the 2024 record count of 128. |
| S24 | SEC Forms 4 and 144 indexed through OpenInsider · United States Securities and Exchange Commission and OpenInsider · 2026-08-26. Every insider transaction from 16 June to 19 August 2026, including withholdings, plan sales and the option exercise. |
| S26 | European Central Bank reference rates · European Central Bank · 2026-08-25. Every local currency conversion in this report. |
| S31 | EPFO scheme pages and the 2026 labour-code employer handbook · Employees' Provident Fund Organisation and India Ministry of Labour · 2026-08-26. The Indian provident fund and gratuity baselines shown in the benefits section. |
| S27 | Australian Taxation Office and Fair Work Ombudsman guidance · Australian Government · 2026-08-26. The 12 percent superannuation guarantee, four weeks annual leave, ten days personal leave and the 26-week Parental Leave Pay entitlement from 1 July 2026. |
| S33 | GOV.UK holiday entitlement and workplace pension guidance · United Kingdom Government · 2026-08-26. The 5.6-week statutory holiday minimum and the 8 percent auto-enrolment minimum with a 3 percent employer floor. |
| S35 | CrowdStrike, Datadog, Zscaler and Fastly proxy statements · United States Securities and Exchange Commission · 2026-08-26. Peer chief executive compensation comparison. |
| S39 | NET historical quote · The Wall Street Journal and Nasdaq market data · 2026-08-25. The $277.58 closing price used to mark executive equity awards. |
Recent News & Workforce Trend
Cloudflare's 2026 has been defined by a workforce redesign rather than by a pay action. No company-wide salary increase, freeze or cut was announced in any source reviewed, and the two events that actually changed employee compensation were the May restructuring terms and the June equity-plan amendments.
Cloudflare grew headcount by 40 percent across FY2024 and FY2025 and then reversed roughly two years of that growth in a single May 2026 action. Revenue did not fall with it: Q2 2026 revenue of $696.1 million annualises well above FY2025. That combination, rising revenue against a fifth fewer people, is the most important context for any Cloudflare pay conversation in 2026, because it means the company is not under cost pressure but has materially fewer roles above every rung.
The current employer-branding baseline after the May reset, against 5,156 employees reported at the 2025 year-end. Cloudflare still describes a presence in 30 or more countries.
Michelle Zatlyn reported a 198,018-share conversion against 99,009 underlying shares at no consideration, a share-class movement rather than an economic disposal.
Prince, Zatlyn, Seifert and Riley together had 50,173 shares withheld for tax worth about $15.84 million, the clearest public marker of the quarterly cadence on the 2025 awards.
The amendments updated reserve architecture and purchase-period limits in connection with the Class C share split, including a 3,000-share cap per ESPP purchase period.
Departing employees received base pay through 2026, United States healthcare support through year-end, equity vesting through 15 August and prorated vesting even where the one-year cliff had not been reached. Cloudflare framed the action as a redesign rather than a cost-cutting exercise.
Quarterly revenue of $639.8 million with an initial restructuring charge estimate of $140 million to $150 million, later revised upward.
17,594,303 shares under the 2019 Equity Incentive Plan and 3,518,860 under the ESPP, materially above the 31 December 2025 availability figures.
Headcount reached 5,156 and stock-based compensation was $451.454 million, roughly 21 percent of revenue, with 4.884 million units granted at a $144.32 weighted-average grant-date fair value.
Matthew Prince at $60,550,500, Michelle Zatlyn at $60,045,500, Thomas Seifert at $10,742,000 and Douglas Kramer at $5,646,000, every one of them with $0 of annual cash bonus, against a $156,306 median employee.
The plan under which Thomas Seifert's 17 June 2026 sale of 10,000 shares at $232.39 was executed, seven months after adoption.
The second year of the pre-restructuring scale-up, before headcount peaked at 5,156.
Roughly the same size as the company describes itself after the 2026 reduction, which makes the last three years a full round trip in headcount terms.