Sr Principal, Infrastructure Business Operations

The Sr Principal, Infrastructure Business Operations acts as the administrative and operational keystone of Infrastructure Engineering. The individual in this role is a key partner to the SVP of Infrastructure Engineering, managing the budget process, ensuring cross-functional alignment both internally and externally, managing reporting and KPIs, and ensuring that velocity is maintained across all of Infrastructure Engineering’s key programs. This individual has a heavy bias toward organization and action, and is highly detail-oriented, outcome-focused, and data-driven.  

The ideal candidate for this role has deep, meaningful experience partnering with senior leaders in infrastructure leadership roles.  You have worked extensively with large SaaS infrastructure deployments, and intrinsically understand what is important within the context of infrastructure. You can meet engineers and engineering leaders where they are, speaking fluently in both hard-core engineering and senior corporate leadership circles.  You perform at your best under pressure, and exhibit poise, grace, and competence in front of customers. You can balance strategy and tactics, and are always several chess moves ahead of the status quo. You can influence to the net benefit of F5 and Infrastructure Engineering, and operate with extreme independence.  

You can comfortably act as a proxy for the SVP of Infrastructure Engineering, both internally and externally, taking on the mantle of organizational commitments or de-commitments, confident that you and the SVP of Infrastructure Engineering operate with a shared context and prioritization scheme. 

You are driven, highly empathetic, fearlessly kind, and believe in the concept of exhibiting and soliciting personal authenticity without compromise. You never settle for less on culture, people or values. You are radically transparent, and always tell the truth to any level of the organization. 

Primary Responsibilities 

• Lead quarterly and annual strategic planning processes, ensuring alignment between the organization’s long-term vision and near-term execution goals.  

• Partner with IE leaders to manage the operating rhythm of the organization, owning and leading key activities such as quarterly business reviews (QBRs), town halls, roadmap planning, and leadership team meetings/offsites.  

• Function as the primary liaison and partner with other operations teams, cultivating a strong, productive and collaborative relationship. 

• Translate high-level product, engineering, and architecture strategies into actionable execution plans, goals, clear metrics (KPIs), and measurable deliverables.  

• Track, report, and drive progress against goals, key value streams, and organizational initiatives to ensure accountability and momentum.  

• Serve as a key strategic advisor and thought partner to the infrastructure engineering leadership team, contributing to decision-making and strategic direction.  

• Navigate governance processes and facilitate collaboration to ensure seamless alignment during periods of organizational or strategic change.  

• Act as a primary connector and liaison between Infrastructure Engineering and cross-functional partners, including Engineering, Product Management, Sales, Technology Services, Human Resources and Finance. 

• Drive the adoption of tools, systems, and processes that enhance planning, execution, reporting, and decision-making—designing tailored solutions when necessary to address unique business needs.  

• Create and curate the correct population of reporting/alignment forums and artifacts to ensure continuous progress against Infrastructure Engineering goals/portfolio initiatives.  

• Own executive briefings and data-gathering/follow-up for external meetings. 

• Create and update senior executive reporting artifacts (PowerPoint decks, briefing documents, pre-reads, offsite content, agendas and QBR materials) 

• Manage the Infrastructure Engineering budget and associated artifacts/reporting vehicles. 

• Prepare and curate the Infrastructure Engineering headcount plans 

• Know when to insert yourself and redirect asks or meetings, ensuring that the level of escalation is appropriate to the ask/forum/decision. 

• You can refuse as eloquently as you can acquiesce. 

Requirements 

• Be kind 

• Be a key partner to the SVP of Infrastructure Engineering, working as a team with shared context, deliverables, and priorities.  

• You proactively push artifacts and reviews to the SVP of Infrastructure Engineering (and other LT members) based on your unique knowledge of upcoming deliverables, meetings or conferences, without being asked. 

• Have 7+ years' experience working with or within infrastructure engineering organizations, focused primarily on leading business operations or acting as a Chief of Staff. 

• Have extremely polished and well-developed relationship-building skills, naturally building bridges outside of Infrastructure Engineering and with customers.  

• Have a proven track record of driving strategic planning, capacity planning, infrastructure engineering/operations, and cross-functional programs in fast-paced environments. 

• Your written English skills are novel-worthy – people love to read what you write. 

• Have strong analytical and problem-solving capabilities, with specific proficiency in working with and explaining complex data sets. 

• Be able to influence and collaborate across all levels of an organization, using your relationship-building skills and domain expertise to drive outsized results relative to your role. 

• You think ahead as your default mode of operation.  You are constantly creating artifacts or processes in advance of need, based on your context clues and positional knowledge.  

• You push artifacts and knowledge into the Infrastructure Engineering leadership team, rather than being asked for them. 

• Your artifacts (decks, pre-reads, briefing documents) are accurate, polished, complete, and audience appropriate (up to and including board-level). You do not need to rely on AI, technical writers, or designers to deliver your final products. 

• You own the administrative aspects of operating Infrastructure Engineering, driving weekly staff meetings, town halls, and other engagement forums as appropriate.  

• You create accountability throughout the organization. 

• You don’t miss details or deliverables.  Organization and alignment is your super-power. 

• You have a bachelor's degree in business, finance, or information technology, a related field, or equivalent experience.