Senior Engineer – IPSec, Kubernetes, Networking

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 Summary

We are looking for a highly skilled Senior Software Engineer with strong expertise in Kubernetes, networking, dataplane technologies, IPSec, and Internet protocols. The candidate will design, develop, troubleshoot, and optimize cloud-native networking solutions for scalable and secure distributed systems. This role requires deep technical knowledge of container networking, Linux networking stack, security protocols, and high-performance dataplane technologies.

Key Responsibilities

• Design and develop scalable networking solutions for Kubernetes and cloud-native environments.
• Work on container networking technologies including CNI, ingress/egress, and network policies.
• Implement and troubleshoot IPSec VPN solutions including tunnel setup, encryption, authentication, and key exchange mechanisms.
• Analyze and improve network performance, latency, throughput, and scalability.
• Debug complex networking issues across Kubernetes clusters, Linux hosts, and distributed systems.
• Work with Internet protocols including TCP/IP, UDP, BGP, OSPF, DNS, DHCP, HTTP/HTTPS, NAT, VXLAN, GRE, and routing technologies.
• Collaborate with platform, security, and infrastructure teams for end-to-end solution delivery.
• Contribute to architecture discussions, design reviews, and technical strategy.
• Automate deployment, testing, monitoring, and operational workflows.
• Participate in root cause analysis and production issue resolution.
• Mentor junior engineers and guide best engineering practices.
  
  
  

Required Skills & Qualifications

Core Technical Skills

• Strong experience with Kubernetes architecture and administration.
• Deep understanding of Kubernetes networking
• Expertise in Linux networking stack
• Hands-on experience with IPSec:
• IKEv1/IKEv2
• ESP/AH
• tunnel and transport modes
• strongSwan/LibreSwan
• Strong understanding of Internet protocols
• Experience with cloud platforms and hybrid networking.
• Strong debugging and packet analysis skills
• Programming/scripting experience in:
• Go
• Python
• C/C++
• Bash
  
  
  

DevOps & Automation

• Experience with CI/CD pipelines and Git workflows.
• Familiarity with Infrastructure as Code and automation tools.
• Experience with observability and monitoring tools such as Prometheus and Grafana.
  
  
  

Preferred Qualifications

• Knowledge of telecom/cloud networking and CNF architectures.
• Experience with OpenShift and enterprise Kubernetes platforms.
• Familiarity with multi-cluster and multi-cloud networking.
• Contributions to open-source networking projects are a plus.
  
  
  

Soft Skills

• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills.
• Excellent communication and collaboration abilities.
• Ability to work independently in fast-paced environments.
• Ownership mindset and proactive troubleshooting approach.
  
  
  

Experience Range

• 8+ years of experience in networking, cloud-native infrastructure, or distributed systems engineering.
  
  
  

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].