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.
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 are obsessed 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.
ABOUT THE TEAM
F5's Infrastructure Capacity Engineering team is responsible for the planning, sourcing, and delivery of network, compute, security, and data center capacity across F5’s global SaaS footprint. This includes an active data center expansion spanning multiple metro deployments worldwide. The team sits at the intersection of engineering, procurement, finance, and legal; translating capacity forecasts into real infrastructure on the ground.
ABOUT THE ROLE
The Strategic Sourcing Manager – Network Planning and Acquisition brings both commercial depth and cross-functional instincts to operate effectively at the intersection of network strategy and global infrastructure delivery. You perform at your best under pressure, and exhibit poise, grace, and competence. You can balance sourcing strategy, tactics and are always several chess moves ahead of the status quo. You can influence to the net benefit of F5, Infrastructure Engineering and operate with extreme independence.
In this role, you will own the alignment between F5's network sourcing strategy and its global infrastructure connectivity and data center selection needs, ensuring the right data center, fiber, carrier services, and interconnect capacity are secured at the right time, in the right markets, to support a global infrastructure footprint that is actively growing.
This is a cross-functional role by design. You'll work directly with Supply Chain, Network Engineering, Infrastructure Operations, Finance, Product, and Procurement as the connective layer that turns capacity signals into sourcing decisions and supply constraints into acquisition strategies. The job is ensuring F5's network infrastructure can deliver the performance its customers depend on.
Requirements:
Category Strategy & Planning
- Develop and execute category strategies across dark fiber, wavelengths, carrier services (OOB, Wi-Fi), IP transit, peering (public and private), IX connectivity, and OSP services
- Translate network expansion plans and capacity forecasts into sourcing roadmaps and budget plans
- Provide cost, schedule, and risk inputs to Network Architecture, Infrastructure, and Program teams to inform long-range planning and capital allocation decisions
Strategic Sourcing & Commercial Execution
- Lead RFPs, negotiations, and contract awards with ISPs, carriers, utilities, and fiber providers: including dark fiber, leases, lit services, and IP transit and peering agreements
- Negotiate commercial terms including pricing, SLAs, build timelines, capacity rights, port pricing, blended rate structures, traffic engineering flexibility, renewal structures, and performance remedies
- Develop and execute peering strategies: public peering at IXPs and private peering with content providers, networks, and hyperscalers to optimize cost, performance, and traffic ratios across F5's global edge
- Evaluate and influence data center and colocation site selection in partnership with Infrastructure teams, ensuring chosen facilities support F5's connectivity requirements, peering strategy, and long-term network economics
- Manage and grow commercial relationships with Tier 1 and regional fiber, carrier, and transit providers
- Ensure all sourcing strategies align with F5's network architecture standards, security requirements, and long-term growth plans
Technical & Program Delivery Integration
- Work directly with KMZs, GIS tools, and route maps to validate fiber paths, diversity requirements, splice points, and rights-of-way during network acquisition and delivery planning
- Partner with Network Engineering to translate technical requirements — routes, diversity, latency, fiber type, splice/access points, peering policy, and IXP membership strategy —into executable sourcing packages
- Support delivery of fiber builds, carrier turn-ups (provisioning coordination, and acceptance testing), and interconnect deployments across multiple global markets
- Track and manage milestones across design, permitting, construction, testing, and service acceptance
Supplier Performance & Risk Management
- Establish and manage supplier KPIs covering delivery, availability, resiliency, cost, and responsiveness
- Lead regular supplier performance reviews and drive remediation plans where commitments fall short
- Proactively assessing market conditions, right-of-way risks, construction constraints, and carrier capacity limitations to get ahead of supply risk before it becomes a program risk
Cross-Functional Support
- Collaborate with Network Engineering, Infrastructure Planning, and Legal to resolve technical and commercial issues quickly and decisively
- Support expansion into new markets by securing early fiber access, scalable connectivity, and colocation access ahead of demand
- Coordinate with carriers, Network Engineering, and Operations to support troubleshooting of fiber outages, service interruptions, and capacity constraints
What You'll Bring
Required Qualifications
- 8+ years of experience in strategic sourcing, network procurement, or infrastructure acquisition, with a track record of owning commercial relationships and sourcing functions end-to-end
- Demonstrated expertise in fiber and carrier sourcing at scale, including hands-on experience structuring dark fiber IRUs, lit service agreements, IP transit contracts, and peering arrangements across large, multi-site, multi-market environments
- Hyperscale, carrier, or large enterprise background: You've done this at a company where network infrastructure runs on a scale and sourcing decisions carry real financial and operational weight
- Commercial and technical depth across network infrastructure: You understand fiber, transport, and carrier services at a level that lets you reason about route diversity, fiber specifications, transport architectures, capacity pricing models, and what those choices mean for network economics and sourcing strategy
- Broad infrastructure literacy: You don't need to be a network engineer, but you need to understand how routing, traffic engineering, peering policy, data center connectivity, and physical infrastructure constraints interact
- Strong analytical and commercial modeling skills: Proficiency in tools and methods for building TCO models, benchmarking carrier pricing, and evaluating build vs. buy decisions. The tool matters less than the rigor — but the output must be actionable and defensible, not a static slide deck
- Operational credibility: You've been close enough to live network infrastructure to understand what capacity constraints, carrier SLA failures, and route outages mean in practice and how to translate that operational reality into sourcing decisions that protect service delivery
- Clear, executive-ready communication: You can write a crisp sourcing briefing, present it to a VP, defend your assumptions, and translate complex network acquisition trade-offs into the language of business risk, cost, and investment
- Proficiency with network topology and planning tools, including KMZ/GIS tools, route mapping platforms, and fiber management systems
- Solid knowledge of network performance and capacity metrics — traffic volumes, port utilization, transit ratios, latency, and diversity requirements
- Experience with demand forecasting and capacity-driven sourcing, including translating traffic growth projections and infrastructure expansion plans into procurement timelines and supply strategies
#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.
