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.
The Principal Security Engineer is a technical security position in the F5 Security Incident Response Team (F5 SIRT). Addressing security issues in F5 products is the responsibility of the F5 Security Incident Response Team (F5 SIRT). The F5 SIRT is a dedicated, global team that manages the receipt, investigation, and public reporting of security vulnerability information that is related to F5 products and networks.
The Principal Security Engineer position provides expert security technical leadership for F5 SIRT. This position requires complete Security Knowledge and an expert with regards to security threats, incident handling methodologies and offensive/defensive attack vectors. A Principal Security Engineer follows incident handling procedures to drive mitigation of security incidents and will be called to perform expert attack analysis, configuration suggestions, and potential onsite interaction. A Principal Security Engineer can handle multiple active issues of diverse scope simultaneously while maintaining good communication, particularly written communication to our customers, and accepts ownership of issues until a resolution is delivered or a business as usual state is returned, providing high customer satisfaction. When not engaged in incidents, a Principal Security Engineer will mentor other security related issues, researches emerging threats and both documents and presents their impact on F5 products and services. Advocates every single day for improving the security of F5 products and services.
A good candidate has a deep passion for security and a desire to help develop a security mindset in others. The role also requires a strong ability to work with incomplete information and to adapt to changing priorities.
PRIMARY RESPONSIBILITIES:
- Responsible for upholding F5s business code of ethics & for promptly reporting violations of the code or other company policies
- Manages multiple issues and prioritizes based upon customer and business needs, without direction
- Provides F5 customers with a consistently high-quality support experience
- Assist other Security Engineers with other tasks as required based upon business operation needs
- Effectively engages supporting escalation personnel, without direction
- Participate in weekend support rotation
- Participate in tier 2 and tier 3 security support
- Provides F5 customers with high-quality support experience
- Manages multiple issues and prioritizes based upon customer and business needs, without direction
- Effectively engages supporting escalation personnel, without direction
- Ensure complete and clear incident documentation
- Maintain incident documentation, participate in post-mortems, and write incident reports.
- Continuous research into emerging threats and mitigation options
- Independently develops and deliver security content and training based on research and testing within the security field and with F5 products to drive security mindset.
- Perform general security awareness and specific security technology training
- Engages in ongoing training within the security field and with F5 products
- Follows processes defined in F5’s Quality Management System (QMS)
- Work closely with others to develop incident response plans
- Identify the gaps between the security incident response process and customers' needs, optimize/improve the workflow/process
- Act as the technical lead, identify the knowledge/technical skill gaps in the team, develop a training plan for the team, mentor/train other members of the team
- Identify trends and/or common knowledge gaps and ensure they are documented via the KCS Solve Loop
- Ensure that security-related knowledge is documented within KCS and represent Security within the KCS Evolve Loop, for example RCA feedback into product design & documentation
- May lead projects and provide guidance/training to less experienced staff, mentoring.
- Perform expert threat and vulnerability management, monitoring of CVE, and vendor notifications
- Evaluate and execute cross-functional security initiatives across the enterprise.
- Work with cross-functional Engineering teams to ensure all systems are properly remediated according to our policies and standards.
- Lead steering committee(s) to analyze vulnerabilities and their impact to assess risk ratings
- Provide strategic security analytics metrics and reports.
- Capable of anticipating future business challenges and crafting security strategies that mitigate those risks
- Provide security-related metrics for all levels, including executive-level dashboards to demonstrate process effectiveness and remediation across the enterprise
- Effectively communicate and document risks related to the vulnerability environment and appropriate levels of urgency to management and engineering staff
- Represent Security on organizational projects and ensure adherence to existing security policies and standards.
- Work closely with Incident Response and Risk Management teams and leverage corporate tools to provide supporting documentation for remediation prioritization and emergency security coverage.
- Ability to think with a security mindset. The successful candidate has a strong IT background with in-depth knowledge of several key security practice areas: application security, network security, and infrastructure security.
Product Security Incident Response Team (PSIRT) and Vulnerability Management
- Monitor and identify security vulnerabilities in F5’s products and Services by tracking internal reports, external researcher submissions, bug bounty programs, and industry threat intelligence
- Triage and assess reported vulnerabilities and incidents, determining severity, impact, and prioritization based on risk to customers and systems
- Coordinate with Product Engineering, Product Management, Legal, Corporate Communications, and other teams to develop security advisories for security issues.
- Communicate effectively with stakeholders, disseminating clear security advisories, mitigations, and fix notifications to customers, partners, and the public.
- Manage interactions with external security researchers, validating vulnerability disclosures, and facilitating recognition or rewards through bug bounty programs when applicable.
- Document all security incidents, responses, and resolutions to ensure compliance, support audits, and drive process improvements.
- Develop, maintain, and update security/Quarterly Security Notification (QSN) playbooks, and workflows to optimize vulnerability management and incident response processes.
- Engage with the broader security community, participating in industry forums, sharing threat intelligence, and collaborating with other PSIRTs to stay ahead of emerging threats (CISA, FIRST, VINCE, etc).
Customer Security Incident Response
- Provide incident handling and drive both attack analysis and mitigation options
- Participate in tier 2 and tier 3 security support
- Follows processes defined in F5’s Quality Management System (QMS)
- Mentoring Security SRs to resolution - Proactively monitors Security Service Request (SR) with long Time to Resolution (TTR)
- Working with F5 SIRT Specialists to handle ESRP cases
- Maintain incident documentation, participate in post-mortems, and write incident reports.
- Working with SR Security Engineers on post-mortem for ESRP incidents
- Tracking attack trends and threat intelligence from different sources
- Monitors security issues in order to identify and act upon them as they occur – Active Mentoring
- Running workshops to help F5 SIRT Specialists build hands-on experience in a lab environment in order to better prepare for dealing with attacks in the real environment – With Sr. Sec Eng
- Simulating a typical customer network environment (in terms of versions, modules, network devices), running different attacks, documenting the security incident response plan, and exercising it
- Work closely with others to develop incident response plans
Building Security Mindset - Security Evangelism
- Running regional F5 SIRT meetings
- Handling reactive mentor questions on Security from F5 SIRT Specialists and NSEs – Monitor F5 SIRT email
- Creating security presentations for a wide audience
- Engages in ongoing training within the security field and with F5 products
- May lead projects and provide guidance/training to less experienced staff and mentoring.
- Evaluate and execute cross-functional security initiatives across the enterprise.
- Work with cross-functional Engineering teams to ensure all systems are properly remediated according to our policies and standards.
QUALIFICATIONS:
- Minimum of 15 years of experience in a technical security role such as support, monitoring or consulting (e.g. pen testing) working with relevant technologies
- Information security subject matter expert
- Expert understanding of industry standards such as CVE, CPE, and CVSS
- Strong understanding of security frameworks and NIST standards
- Appropriate security-based qualification; CISSP, GCIH (or demonstrated skills and ability to obtain certification) – more than one certification preferred.
- Public cloud certifications (or demonstrated skills and ability to obtain certification)
- Expert experience with security incident handling processes, procedures and methodologies.
- Expert technical experience with identifying and mitigating a breadth of attacks such as DDoS, web application, DNS, and other network attacks.
- Expert knowledge of common security vulnerabilities and the ability to judge their severity
- Expert experience with working security incidents at corporate production environments
- Experience working with network and packet analysis tools
- BA/BS degree or equivalent experience
- Expert knowledge with Web Application Firewalls, Firewalls and IPS/IDS
- Expert experience with network vulnerability scanners
- Expert OS hardening and security best practices
- Knowledge of common Malware types and infection vectors
- Expert knowledge in threat modeling, secure architecture, secure coding practices, and security testing.
KNOWLEDGE, SKILLS AND ABILITIES
- Hands on technical experience with and very knowledgeable on LAN/WAN operations, and/or networking hardware required
- CVE and CERT experience
- Expert knowledge of security offensive/defensive techniques and methodologies.
- Expert understanding of security attack/defense methodologies (e.g. DNS, network TCP/IP, SSL and HTTP)
- Expert understanding and working knowledge of TCP/IP, SSL, DNS, HTTP, and common protocols.
- Coding experience – having, in addition to proficiency in Python, knowledge in other scripting languages
- Understanding of the underlying mechanisms for security vulnerabilities at a code and assembly level, e.g. buffer overflows, input sanitisation
- Knowledge of network and security monitoring tools
- Familiarity with load balancers, WAF’s and common network architectures
- Working knowledge of standard UNIX/Linux command line tools
- Hands-on technical experience with public clouds (e.g. AWS, Azure, or GCP), and container-based deployments and orchestration tools (e.g. Kubernetes, Docker, Terraform, and Ansible)
- Knowledge of microservice architecture, modern application architecture, and API security
- Ability to generate new training and knowledge sharing content via various delivery methods
- Able to work with moderate supervision
- Proven track record in a team environment
- Analytical thinker with strong attention to detail
- Must be able to read, write, and speak English fluently, including technical concepts and terminology.
- Must be able to relay technical information to customers with varying skill levels
- Ability to create attack Proof of Concepts
- Experience with incident tracking software, Seibel experience a plus
PHYSICAL DEMANDS AND WORK ENVIRONMENT:
Duties are performed in a normal office environment while sitting at a desk or computer table. Duties require the ability to utilize a computer, communicate over the telephone, and read printed material. Duties may require the ability to travel via automobile or airplane, approximately 20% of the time spent traveling. Some datacenter/lab work as well. Duties may require the ability to lift 50 lbs enabling them to rack our controllers in customer locations or our lab. This role may require work outside of core business hours, including early morning, late evening, overnight, weekends, and/or holidays as needed. There will be a requirement to participate in an on-call rotation
Some travel may be required, a current passport is required
This role is regional – Americas, EMEA and APJ.
#LI-SS5
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.
