Sr. Manager, Firmware

Overview

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.

We’re looking for an experienced Sr. Manager, Firmware to lead a team building reliable, secure, and serviceable firmware across the full product lifecycle—from hardware bring‑up and boot loaders through runtime services and field upgrades. You’ll own roadmap execution, elevate engineering excellence, and partner cross‑functionally to deliver platform capabilities that delight customers and meet stringent security and compliance expectations (e.g., secure boot, code signing, measured boot).

• Lead & grow the team:
  Build and mentor a diverse team of firmware engineers, set clear objectives, and develop career paths; foster a high‑trust, high‑ownership culture.
• Own roadmap & delivery:
  Drive quarterly and annual planning, sequencing work across boot, board bring‑up, drivers, runtime services, manufacturing/test firmware, and in‑field update mechanisms.
• Raise the bar on security & quality:
  Establish standards for secure boot, code‑signing, anti‑rollback protections, measured boot, vulnerability remediation, and incident response.
• Drive architecture & design reviews:
  Make pragmatic architecture choices for bootloaders (legacy BIOS (AMI, Phoenix, Insyde) and modern UEFI/EDK II), embedded Linux components, and BMC/MCU firmware—balancing performance, reliability, and serviceability.
• Establish robust CI/CD for firmware:
  Define automated build, test, and validation, ensuring repeatable releases and traceable artifacts across SKUs.
• Support manufacturing & field readiness:
  Partner with MFG and Global Services to define factory programming, golden images, and resilient upgrade strategies (A/B, recovery partitions).
• Collaborate cross‑functionally:
  Work with Hardware, FPGA, Data Path, MFG, and Product Management teams to align requirements and shepherd PRDs into executable plans.
• Manage risk & compliance:
  Define telemetry, detection, and recovery strategies for firmware integrity, and align to relevant standards (e.g., FIPS 140‑3, FedRAMP implications as applicable).
• Budget & vendor management:
  Plan capacity, skill mix, and external partnerships (contractors, tooling, labs, vendors) to meet goals within budget.
• Communicate crisply:
  Provide status, risks, and decisions to leadership; translate technical details into business outcomes.

• 6+ years in embedded/firmware engineering, including 2-3+ years prior experience managing or leading a technical team of firmware engineers
• Proven experience with UEFI BIOS.
• Deep knowledge of OpenBMC, IPMI, or Redfish.
• Hands‑on experience with C/C++ and low‑level debugging
• Deep knowledge of boot architectures (UEFI/BIOS, bootloaders), BMC, SPI/QSPI flash, IO peripherals, and runtime firmware.
• Strong background in implementing security protocols and secure boot mechanisms.
• Strong understanding of buses/protocols (I2C/I3C, SPI, UART, DDR, PCIe, GPIO, PMIC), and memory/storage (NOR/NAND, DRAM, SSD).
• Proficiency with tools such as Git, GDB and JTAG.
• Demonstrated success shipping products at scale, owning release management and in‑field update frameworks.
• Developed strategies for testing and resolving firmware issues across development and production.
• Excellent people leadership, performance management, and stakeholder communication.
• Experience with Arm/x86 platforms, embedded Linux, secure elements, and measured boot pipelines.
• Prior work with factory programming, golden image workflows, and recovery strategies (A/B, rollback protections).
• Exposure to cloud‑connected devices and policy/version orchestration across fleets.

• 10+ years in embedded/firmware engineering, including 6+…