At F5, we strive to bring a better digital world to life. Our teams empower organizations across the globe to create, secure, and run applications that enhance how we experience our evolving digital world. We are passionate about cybersecurity, from protecting consumers from fraud to enabling companies to focus on innovation.

Everything we do centers around people. That means we obsess over how to make the lives of our customers, and their customers, better. And it means we prioritize a diverse F5 community where each individual can thrive.

Position Summary

F5 is seeking a Senior Architect for BIG-IP to lead technical strategy and architecture across its entire BIG-IP products. This role drives the evolution of F5’s security services across BIG-IP software, hardware, and cloud-native platforms, ensuring they are integrated, scalable, and secure-by-design. As a senior technical leader, you will unify architecture direction, modernize legacy systems, and represent F5’s security vision in both internal strategy and external engagements.

Primary Responsibilities

Serves as primary source of technical expertise to one or more project teams.
Helps detail all aspects of product design and ensures that resulting design specification fits into technical architectural framework.
Recommends and maintains technical design methodologies, processes, technologies and standards
Leads, reviews and may direct the architecture of F5's key hardware and software components.
Prepare/analyze/architect product for future scalability
Devises and develops new solutions that may involve cross-module dependencies.
Lead cross functional design teams to develop new product as well as address design issues / maintenance of existing ones
Regularly informs top management and senior external personnel on company’s technical capabilities and future direction
Bring industry best practices and help navigate changing technologies and upcoming trends to create a strategic company product roadmap.
Integrates research and emerging business/industry trends into company product platforms.
F5 technology spokesperson at internal and external forums
Creates formal networks with key decision makers and serves as external spokesperson for the organization.
Act as a mentor for other junior members in the team

Knowledge, Skills and Abilities

Industry respected speaker, participating in both internal and external events.
Deep understanding of L7 protocols (HTTP/2, HTTP/3, WebSockets, gRPC) and application security standards (OWASP Top 10, NIST, MITRE ATT&CK).
Strong technical understanding of TLS, certificate management, identity and access protocols (OAuth2, OIDC, SAML), and secure session management.
Familiarity with zero trust architectures, policy-as-code, multi-tenant designs, and runtime enforcement in container-based platforms
Expert Knowledge and extensive experience with network and web technologies.
Experience leading complex product development initiatives from concept through release.
Extensive development experience in embedded operating systems.
Exceptional problem solving and project management skills.
Strong leadership skills and an ability to mentor and groom other engineers.
Demonstrated excellence in written and verbal communications.
Able to collaborate and thrive in a fast-paced high-performance environment.

Qualifications

Typically requires a minimum of 15 years of related experience with a Bachelor’s degree; or 12 years and a Master’s degree; or a PhD with 8 years experience; or equivalent experience

The Job Description is intended to be a general representation of the responsibilities and requirements of the job. However, the description may not be all-inclusive, and responsibilities and requirements are subject to change.

The annual base pay for this position is: $246,400.00 - $369,600.00

F5 maintains broad salary ranges for its roles in order to account for variations in knowledge, skills, experience, geographic locations, and market conditions, as well as to reflect F5’s differing products, industries, and lines of business. The pay range referenced is as of the time of the job posting and is subject to change.

You may also be offered incentive compensation, bonus, restricted stock units, and benefits. More details about F5’s benefits can be found at the following link: https://www.f5.com/company/careers/benefits. F5 reserves the right to change or terminate any benefit plan without notice.

Please note that F5 only contacts candidates through F5 email address (ending with @f5.com) or auto email notification from Workday (ending with f5.com or @myworkday.com).

Equal Employment Opportunity

It is the policy of F5 to provide equal employment opportunities to all employees and employment applicants without regard to unlawful considerations of race, religion, color, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, age, sensory, physical, or mental disability, marital status, veteran or military status, genetic information, or any other classification protected by applicable local, state, or federal laws. This policy applies to all aspects of employment, including, but not limited to, hiring, job assignment, compensation, promotion, benefits, training, discipline, and termination. F5 offers a variety of reasonable accommodations for candidates. Requesting an accommodation is completely voluntary. F5 will assess the need for accommodations in the application process separately from those that may be needed to perform the job. Request by contacting accommodations@f5.com.

Sr Architect