Principal Engineer, Software

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.

At F5, we are building a distributed cloud services (XC) platform designed to support large-scale, high-performance, and highly available services across multi-cloud environments. The Control Plane Team is seeking an experienced Principal/Senior Principal Engineer with deep technical expertise in routing protocols, networking fundamentals, and distributed systems. You will work on the development and lifecycle of a multi-cloud platform, primarily within AWS environments, leveraging Kubernetes (K8s) for orchestration.

The ideal candidate will have significant experience in routing protocols (BGP, iBGP, OSPF, etc.) and networking fundamentals. Experience working with distributed systems, Kubernetes, and AWS environments is highly desirable. You will be responsible for designing and implementing scalable and resilient control and data plane solutions. Additionally, your leadership experience and technical expertise will help guide the future direction of our product.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead control path development for the XC product line, focusing on scalability and high availability in distributed cloud environments.
• Design and implement scalable, high-performance solutions for distributed cloud(XC).
• Technically lead major system components in distributed systems, from design to implementation.
• Create and maintain functional specifications and design documents to clearly communicate design decisions and solutions.
• Proactively identify and resolve key technical challenges related to performance, security, and scalability.
• Continuously improve the performance and reliability of the platform, ensuring it meets operational demands.
• Investigate and propose solutions to security vulnerabilities within the platform, including third-party integrations.
• Mentor junior engineers and serve as a source of technical expertise across the team.
• Communicate effectively with internal stakeholders, presenting complex technical concepts to both technical and non-technical audiences.

Qualifications

• 14+ years of software engineering experience, with 10+ years in designing and implementing large-scale distributed systems.
• Prior experience with cloud technology and networking, routing platforms, control plane, Docker, Kubernetes, public cloud (Azure, AWS) etc.

• Deep expertise in routing protocol (BGP, OSPF and IPSec routing) and networking protocols (TCP, UDP, L4-L7, HTTP, BGP, IPSec) is mandatory.
• Experience with cloud networking platforms and commercial BGP routing solutions.
• Strong coding proficiency in C++/Golang, with a proven track record of leading complex software development efforts.
• Hands-on experience with Docker, K8s, and microservices architecture in cloud environments.
• Strong architectural skills in designing highly available, real-time systems in distributed environments.
• Proven experience driving complex SW development and test efforts in small and fast paced organizations, with an understanding of the trade-offs that must be made to ensure timeliness and quality.

• Excellent communication, collaboration, and leadership skills, with the ability to lead and mentor teams effectively.
• Passion for learning new technologies, and a track record of doing so.

Nice to have:

• Experience with Route Reflectors and BGP Confederations for managing complex BGP deployments in large-scale environments.
• Understanding of route dampening, BGP path attributes, and BGP synchronization techniques.

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.

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.