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.
Program Manager III
Mid-Level | Technology | Full-Time
About the Role
We're looking for a Program Manager II to own the end-to-end planning, execution, and health of cross-functional programs. You'll be the connective tissue between engineering, product, design, and business stakeholders — not just tracking status, but actively driving outcomes. When blockers appear, you resolve them. When plans slip, you replan proactively. When risks emerge, you own them through to closure.
This is a role for someone who operates with urgency and ownership, not someone who waits to be asked.
Key Responsibilities
Program Planning & Execution
- Own the program plan end-to-end — define roadmaps, milestones, and dependencies across 2–4 concurrent programs spanning multiple teams.
- Actively maintain plans on a weekly basis; when schedules slip or scope shifts, replan proactively with stakeholders rather than waiting to be directed.
- Manage cross-team dependencies and sequencing to ensure smooth handoffs and no surprises at launch.
Program Health & Blocker Resolution
- Maintain a continuous, real-time pulse on program health across schedule, scope, quality, and team capacity — not through weekly snapshots, but through active day-to-day engagement with teams.
- When health indicators slip, take direct action: escalate with a clear recommended path forward, re-scope with product, or coordinate engineering resources. Do not simply report status.
- Drive blockers to resolution within 48 hours or establish a clear escalation path. Program health should never be a surprise to leadership.
- Anticipate risks before they become issues; develop and track mitigation plans with clear owners and deadlines.
Release Quality & Bug Resolution
- Actively monitor defect and bug queues across programs, maintaining a clear picture of open issues by severity, owner, and target resolution date — not as a passive observer, but as an engaged driver of closure.
- Partner with engineering and QA leads to run structured bug triage, ensuring issues are prioritized against release criteria and nothing critical slips through without a decision.
- Track bug burn-down trends in the lead-up to releases; escalate when defect volume or severity threatens the release timeline or quality bar.
- Own the release readiness picture — consolidate bug status, open risks, and outstanding sign-offs into a clear go/no-go recommendation for stakeholders.
- Drive resolution of release-blocking bugs with the same urgency as program blockers — follow up daily if needed, escalate with a recommended path, and don't close the loop until the issue is resolved or formally accepted as a known risk.
Stakeholder Communication & Alignment
- Lead cross-functional syncs and write clear, concise status reports that give stakeholders at all levels the right context to make decisions.
- Partner with Engineering Managers and Product Managers to align on scope, sequencing, and tradeoffs — surfacing tensions early and facilitating resolution.
- Escalate issues with a point of view, not just an alert. Come to every escalation with a recommended solution.
Process & Operational Excellence
- Design and refine program processes — sprint planning, review cadences, escalation paths — tailored to each team's working style.
- Drive post-mortems and retrospectives with rigor; translate findings into concrete process improvements that stick.
- Identify patterns across programs where systemic fixes can reduce recurring friction.
What We're Looking For
- 4–7 years of experience in program or project management in a software or technology environment.
- Demonstrated track record of driving programs to completion in ambiguous, fast-moving environments — not just tracking them.
- Strong written and verbal communication; comfortable presenting clearly to senior leadership and technical teams alike.
- Solid familiarity with Agile, Scrum, or Kanban methodologies and when to apply each.
- Technical fluency sufficient to engage credibly in engineering and architecture discussions — you don't need to write code, but you need to understand how software gets built.
- Experience with program management tools such as Jira, Asana, Linear, or similar.
- A bias for action: you close loops, you follow up, and you treat an unresolved blocker as your personal problem until it's solved.
Nice to Have
- PMP, PMI-ACP, or equivalent certification.
- Experience working in [your domain — e.g., cloud infrastructure, fintech, consumer apps].
- Exposure to OKR frameworks and program-level goal setting.
- Experience managing programs with external vendor or partner dependencies.
What Success Looks Like in Year 1
Delivery
Programs you own ship on time with clear stakeholder alignment and no last-minute surprises.
Blockers
Blockers you own are resolved within 48 hours or have a clear escalation path with a named owner. You never just report a blocker — you drive it.
Relationships
You've built trusted, credible relationships across engineering and product. Teams come to you early with problems, not after they've escalated.
Process
You've improved at least one team process that measurably reduces recurring friction, with evidence it has stuck.
Visibility
Program health is never a surprise to leadership. Stakeholders always know what's green, what's at risk, and what you're doing about it.
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.
