The role
From F5's own posting.
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.
Technical Program Manager
Role Summary
The Technical Program Manager (TPM) leads complex, cross-functional, and often cross-organizational engineering programs from conception through delivery. This role partners closely with engineering, product management, QA, security, operations/SRE, and executive stakeholders to define program strategy, drive alignment, manage execution, and ensure measurable outcomes.
This is a role for TPMs who operate with high autonomy, influence without authority, and bring strong technical judgment, execution rigor, and executive-ready communication. TPMs are expected to proactively identify risks and systemic issues, drive decision-making, and continuously improve processes that scale program delivery.
Responsibilities
Program Execution
Own end-to-end delivery for complex technical programs, defining scope, milestones, success metrics, and execution approach across multiple teams.
Drive cross-team planning (roadmaps, release plans, cutovers), dependency management, and tradeoff decisions to meet quality, timeline, and business objectives.
Establish operating rhythm and governance (cadence, decision logs, escalation paths) to keep stakeholders aligned and unblocked.
Anticipate and resolve ambiguity by driving clear technical and program decisions, including prioritization, resourcing, and sequencing.
Coach and mentor junior TPMs and project coordinators; raise the bar on planning artifacts, reporting, and execution discipline.
Cross-Functional & Cross-Org Alignment
Partner with engineering, product, QA, security, SRE/operations, support, and go-to-market stakeholders to align on requirements, constraints, and launch readiness.
Lead stakeholder alignment forums, ensuring decisions are made at the right level with clear owners, timelines, and follow-through.
Represent program health to leadership with crisp narratives on progress, tradeoffs, risks, and asks.
Data, Reporting & Metrics
Define and instrument program metrics and mechanisms (OKRs/KPIs, quality and reliability signals, delivery predictability) to measure outcomes and drive accountability.
Develop and deliver executive-ready status reporting (dashboards, QBR/SteerCo updates) that highlights risks, decisions needed, and customer/business impact.
Use data to identify trends, unblock teams, and recommend corrective actions to improve delivery and operational excellence.
Risk & Issue Management
Own RAID management for assigned programs, ensuring risks, issues, assumptions, and dependencies are actively mitigated with measurable actions and accountable owners.
Proactively surface delivery, quality, and security risks early; drive cross-team mitigation plans and contingency options.
Manage escalations end-to-end, including framing the decision, presenting options and tradeoffs, and driving closure with stakeholders.
Process & Continuous Improvement
Design and implement program mechanisms that scale execution (intake and prioritization, planning templates, release readiness, change management, post-launch reviews).
Lead continuous improvement initiatives based on retrospective insights, operational data, and stakeholder feedback.
Standardize and improve documentation and tooling (Jira/Smartsheet/Confluence) to increase visibility, reduce churn, and improve predictability.
Required Skills & Qualifications
Technical Skills
Strong understanding of software engineering fundamentals and system design (APIs, distributed systems, cloud infrastructure, reliability, and security concepts).
Ability to engage deeply with technical teams: drive requirements clarity, evaluate solution options, and identify technical risks and non-obvious dependencies.
Proficiency with program tooling and documentation practices (Jira/Confluence, Smartsheet/Excel, dashboards, decision logs, RAID management).
Data fluency: ability to define metrics, interpret trends, and use quantitative and qualitative signals to drive program decisions.
Program & Project Management Skills
Demonstrated ability to lead multi-team programs through the full lifecycle: discovery, planning, execution, launch, and post-launch learning.
Expertise in building integrated plans (milestones, dependencies, resourcing), managing critical paths, and driving tradeoffs to achieve outcomes.
Strong risk management and escalation leadership; able to frame decisions, propose options, and drive closure.
Experience establishing program mechanisms and improving processes across teams (operating rhythms, readiness criteria, retrospectives, governance).
Communication & Collaboration Skills
Executive-ready communication: can translate complex technical and program realities into clear narratives, decisions, and asks.
Influence without authority across engineering and product leaders; strong facilitation and conflict-resolution skills.
High ownership and judgment in ambiguous environments; proactive in identifying gaps and driving clarity.
Mentorship mindset and ability to raise execution standards across teams.
Preferred Qualifications (Nice to Have)
Experience leading platform, infrastructure, security, or large-scale product programs with multiple engineering teams and multi-quarter roadmaps.
Experience driving launches with operational readiness, incident response preparation, and post-launch operational excellence mechanisms.
Background in cloud, networking, DevOps, reliability engineering, or cybersecurity.
Comfort partnering with architecture/technical leadership on requirements and roadmap strategy.
Certifications (optional): PMP, PgMP, SAFe, Scrum (CSM/PSM), AWS/Azure/GCP fundamentals, or security certifications (e.g., Security+).
Certifications are not required but can be helpful depending on the program domain and stakeholder needs.
Behavioral Expectations
Strategic Ownership: Sets direction, defines success, and drives outcomes across teams and stakeholders.
Technical Judgment: Understands system constraints well enough to challenge assumptions, identify risks, and drive pragmatic decisions.
Influence: Builds alignment, navigates conflict, and drives decisions through strong relationships and credibility.
Execution Excellence: Operates with rigor, anticipates issues, and ensures commitments are met with high quality.
Mentorship: Elevates program management capability across the org through coaching, templates, and mechanisms.
Performance Indicators (How Success Will Be Measured)
Consistent delivery of complex programs with predictable execution, clear critical paths, and high-quality outcomes.
Stakeholder confidence and alignment, demonstrated through timely decisions, reduced ambiguity, and effective escalation management.
Measurable improvements in program health and business/customer outcomes (e.g., reliability, adoption, time-to-market, operational readiness).
Proactive risk identification and mitigation that prevents or minimizes impact to delivery, quality, or security.
Creation of scalable mechanisms (process, tooling, templates) that improve execution effectiveness across teams beyond a single program.
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.
The annual base pay for this position is: $144,000.00 - $216,000.00
F5 maintains broad salary ranges for its roles in order to account for variations in knowled