Software Engineer III — BIG‑IP

Overview

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.

Role Summary

At F5, we make apps faster, smarter, and safer…from anywhere.

Come work within the BIG‑IP Shared Components Team in an exciting, fast‑paced environment. We maintain and enhance common binaries, daemons, libraries, and scripts that power BIG‑IP across the platform. You’ll own high‑impact components end‑to‑end—keeping them reliable, secure, and performant—while contributing features, fixes, and healthy release practices.

About The Team

• We are the stewards of BIG‑IP’s shared/building‑block software: daemons, shared libs, system tools, and scripting ecosystems (Perl/Tcl/Python, JS, Java). We ensure these components remain modern, 64‑bit ready, secure, and well‑tested—so product teams can ship confidently.
  
  
  

• Maintain and improve system daemons, binaries, shared libraries, and scripting utilities (Perl, Python, Tcl) on CentOS/RHEL.
• Implement fixes and enhancements; ensure compatibility with current OS/toolchains and alignment with platform standards.
• Contribute to operational excellence: health checks, logs/metrics, start/stop behavior, and service reliability.
• Write and maintain unit, functional, and integration tests; automate in CI/CD.
• Participate in design and code reviews; deliver clear documentation (release notes, runbooks, migration/change guides).
• Evaluate open‑source options for shared functionality; follow licensing and compliance guidelines.
• Run mandatory security scans (static analysis, vuln scans) and remediate findings.
  
  
  

• Linux Fundamentals: Processes, memory, filesystems; service lifecycle with systemd/runit; RPM packaging basics.
• Programming: Strong C/C++ for daemons/libs; practical Perl/Tcl/Python for tools and wrappers; familiarity with JS/Node or Java/JARs a plus.
• Build & Toolchain: GCC/Clang, Make/CMake/autotools; comfortable with compiler/linker flags (e.g., -m64, -fPIC, -Wl,...).
• Debugging: Proficient with gdb, strace, ldd, objdump; working knowledge of valgrind and sanitizers (ASan/UBSan).
• Testing: Experience building automated test suites and integrating into CI (Jenkins/GitLab CI).
• Security Awareness: Static analysis, vulnerability scanning; secure coding practices (bounds checking, input validation).
• Documentation & Collaboration: Clear written communication; cross‑team partnership with platform, QA, release engineering.
  
  
  

• RPM spec files and packaging workflows; containerized builds (Docker/Podman).
• Exposure to messaging stacks (e.g., ZeroMQ, Asio) or graphics/text stacks (e.g., Cairo, Pango, Harfbuzz).
• Familiarity with monitoring/observability toolchains and performance tuning.
  
  
  

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.