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.
Job Description: Principal Software Engineer - Platform
F5 is the global leader in delivering and securing every app and API. Trusted by Global Fortune 500 companies, F5 keeps applications and APIs fast, available, and secure across the complex hybrid multicloud environments where modern digital business operates. Through the F5 Application Delivery and Security Platform (ADSP), F5 converges application delivery and security — spanning data centers, private clouds, public clouds, SaaS platforms, edge environments, and emerging AI architectures — to reduce complexity, strengthen resilience, and protect digital experiences at scale.
About the Position:
We are looking for a Principal Software Engineer to join our ADSP- F5 Connector program team in Bangalore. The F5 Connector is a critical architectural component of the ADSP — it provides the bridge between customer on-premises and cloud-deployed infrastructure (BIG-IP, Kubernetes clusters, edge sites) and F5's cloud-native SaaS services.
As a Principal Engineer, you will own the architecture, performance, and reliability of the connector's data plane and control plane. This is a high-performance, systems-level role requiring deep expertise in Rust / C++ to build software that operates at massive scale. Your work includes, but not limited to, Research, design and build highly reliable, available and scalable platforms, API definition, implementation, deployment, operational management, and debugging
Roles and Responsibilities:
- 12+ years of experience in software engineering in a fast-paced environment with most recent 3+ years as Architect or Principal Engineer with ability to architect & design large scale enterprise class platforms in microservice based solution and architectural style.
- Hands-on coding in Rust / C++, be able to conceptualize and develop prototype quickly - Drive technical roadmap of the team in collaboration with Engineering and Product. Leverage AI to write code that adheres to the requirements, is cost-effective and maintainable.
- Familiarity with the OpenTelemetry Arrow Protocol (OTAP) for efficient, columnar-encoded transport of telemetry data, including schema negotiation and stream lifecycle management
- Grasp of bi-directional (bidi) streaming via gRPC, including flow control, multiplexed streams, back-pressure handling, and long-lived connection management in distributed collector topologies
- Added plus: Experience with Apache Arrow columnar memory format and its application to high-throughput, zero-copy data interchange across analytics and observability workloads
- Own the end-to-end architecture of the F5 Connector, encompassing the data plane (high-throughput packet/request processing, traffic inspection, telemetry collection) and control plane (policy synchronization, configuration management, service registration with F5 Distributed Cloud).
- Mentor senior and junior engineers across Bangalore and global teams; Perform code reviews, set coding practices and guidelines within the team
- Experience working with all the phases of a development cycle for a software product from understanding requirements, going through design, development, deploy phases and maintenance.
- Work with geographically distributed teams
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 [email protected].
Skills Required
- 12+ years of software engineering experience
- At least 3 recent years as an Architect or Principal Engineer
- Experience architecting and designing large-scale enterprise platforms using microservice architecture
- Hands-on software development experience with Rust or C++
- Ability to design and build highly reliable, available, and scalable platforms
- Familiarity with OpenTelemetry Arrow Protocol, including schema negotiation and stream lifecycle management
- Understanding of bidirectional gRPC streaming, flow control, multiplexed streams, back-pressure, and long-lived connections
- Experience across the full software development lifecycle, including requirements, design, development, deployment, and maintenance
- Experience working with geographically distributed engineering teams
- Experience with Apache Arrow columnar memory format
F5 Compensation & Benefits Highlights
The following summarizes recurring compensation and benefits themes identified from responses generated by popular LLMs to common candidate questions about F5 and has not been reviewed or approved by F5.
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Equity Value & Accessibility — Equity grants and an employee stock purchase plan are positioned as meaningful parts of total compensation, with RSUs and a discount ESPP commonly included. Pay packages for many technical roles are considered competitive when equity is taken into account.
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Leave & Time Off Breadth — Paid vacation that increases with tenure, sick time, paid holidays, and paid family leave are prominently featured. Additional programs like volunteer time and periodic wellness long weekends are highlighted as part of the time-off ecosystem.
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Inclusive Benefits Coverage — Health plans include travel support for specific care (such as reproductive and gender‑affirming services) and mental health resources, alongside comprehensive medical, dental, and vision coverage. These elements are presented as part of a broad, inclusive approach to healthcare.
F5 Insights
What We Do
F5 application services ensure that applications are always secure and perform the way they should—in any environment and on any device. F5 (NASDAQ: FFIV) powers applications from development through their entire life cycle, across any multi-cloud environment, so our customers – enterprise businesses, service providers, governments, and consumer brands—can deliver differentiated, high-performing, and secure digital experiences.
