Principal Network Architect

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 

The Principal Network Architect will play a key role in evolving and modernizing the F5 corporate network. Using a zero trust and advanced network segmentation approach this role will focus on  designing secure, scalable, efficient network solutions that span a hybrid on-premise and cloud ecosystem.. Design principles must span a diverse array of environments and use cases including manufacturing centers, global office locations, a global remote workforce, datacenters, and multiple IaaS providers. This role will also play a critical role in the F5 on F5 program, providing product feedback to F5 product teams and helping design and implement customer zero implementations of F5 products and appliances, centering designs on F5 products and services where applicable. The Network Architect role will ensure that the F5’s infrastructure adheres to the highest standards of security, reliability, and performance while incorporating advanced network security practices.  

The ideal candidate will have strong technical expertise in enterprise network architecture and design, extensive experience with zero trust principles, and a deep understanding of network segmentation using F5, Palo Alto, Cisco, and ZTNA technologies. They should have a deep knowledge of the network vendor market, understanding capabilities of a wide variety of tools to solve routing, security, and performance issues, as well as providing competitive analysis of F5’s product stack. Additionally, the candidate will be proficient in deploying and managing network security tools such as secure web gateways, Cloud Access Security Broker (CASB) solutions, and other technologies for data loss protection and threat mitigation.  

This role will have hands-on aspects including building proof-of-concepts, assisting with reference implementations, and troubleshooting designs during implementation. 

Key Responsibilities 

Network Architecture and Design  

• Lead the design and implementation of a zero trust network architecture, integrating network segmentation strategies to minimize lateral movement and reduce security risks.  

• Evolve the corporate network by assessing existing infrastructure and recommending future-state network topologies that align with business and security objectives, and center designs around F5 products and services where appropriate. 

• Architect a hybrid network to seamlessly integrate on-premise environments with public cloud platforms (AWS and Azure), with a strong focus on security, scalability and resilience.  

• Optimize network performance through efficient routing, traffic optimization, and load balancing using F5 technologies and advanced network design practices.  

• Design and support the Digital Innovation Lab to allow for testing and feedback on the F5 product suite used for our in-house designs and capabilities. 

• Establish secure design principles for the network engineering team to leverage when executing on architecture 

• Establish and evangelize automation and infrastructu