Sr. Manager, Business Operation - Process

Sr. Manager, Process Engineering, & Strategy Management

F5 is seeking a Sr. Manager, Process Engineering, & Strategy Management to lead how engineering work is designed, standardized, and run across the organization. Engineering at F5 spans products, platforms, and geographies. What has not kept pace is a shared operating system: consistent standards for planning, execution, documentation, and measurement. The result is uneven process quality, tool sprawl, and too much tribal knowledge.

This leader will partner with Product and cross-functional teams to design organization-wide strategies, define the standards those strategies require, audit compliance, and embed consistent processes into the tools people already use. The role sits at the intersection of strategy, operations, and internal technology and reports to the VP, Engineering and Strategy. You will translate leadership intent into an agenda, run the cadence that keeps the organization accountable, prepare decision-ready materials, and drive follow-through across Technical Program Management, AI Enablement, Tools & Data Visualization, Product, and the engineering organizations they serve.

This role focuses on workflow and systems design rather than running delivery programs. Success comes from creating scalable process standards, turning those standards into business and tool requirements, enabling the teams that implement them, and building a Process Engineering function that can audit adoption and improve the system over time. You will hire and lead a team spanning tooling product management, UI/UX for internal platforms, and process and data audit.

You will:

• Establish process principles, standards, and roadmaps that guide planning, execution, documentation, measurement, and continuous improvement across product and platform engineering.
• Partner with Product and cross-functional leaders to design strategies that are practical to adopt then audit compliance and close the gaps.
• Translate process intent into tool requirements, workflows, and guardrails so the standard way of working is the default way of working in Jira, Confluence, internal platforms, and BI surfaces.
• Serve as a strategic thought partner to the VP, Engineering and Strategy: frame choices, surface tradeoffs, facilitate leadership discussions, and follow through until outcomes have owners.
• Drive alignment across Technical Program Management, AI Enablement, Tools & Data Visualization, Product, and engineering leadership without relying solely on reporting lines.
• Build, coach, and set the bar for a new Process Engineering team spanning tooling product management, internal UI/UX, and process and data audit.
• Champion change, enablement, and a lightweight governance model so standards scale and unused process gets retired.

Primary Responsibilities

• Design and run the operating rhythm for Engineering Operations and Strategy staff meetings, quarterly planning, initiative reviews, and leadership communications so priorities stay visible and accountable.
• Translate organizational priorities into actionable plans with clear goals, workstreams, milestones, and owners.
• Prepare decision-oriented reports, dashboards, and presentations for senior leadership; improve the quality of performance discussions rather than adding status theater.
• Plan and facilitate senior leadership meetings and cross-functional working sessions: create structure around complex topics, surface decisions, and lock ownership and next steps.
• Handle sensitive business and personnel information with discretion. Synthesize signal from a noisy environment and keep leadership focused on the few things that matter.
• Map end-to-end engineering workflows, identify friction and local workarounds, and design scalable standards that reduce complexity instead of adding process.
• Establish workflow standards, design principles, and process frameworks for intake, prioritization, delivery, documentation, and operational metrics.
• Recommend changes to policies and procedures that affect Engineering Operations and the broader engineering organization.
• Shape future-state operating models with Product, Program Management, and engineering partners so "good" is explicit and repeatable.
• Build a lightweight governance and audit practice: assess adoption of standards, identify exceptions, and drive corrective action without creating a police function.
• Lead process and data audit work, including documentation quality, data completeness, and the integrity of the metrics leadership uses to run the business.
• Develop KPIs, scorecards, and feedback loops that show whether standards are adopted and whether they are actually improving speed, quality, or clarity.
• Use findings to retire unused process, simplify what remains, and raise the floor of execution quality over time.
• Turn process design into business requirements for internal tools, automation, and visualization then stay close to implementation until the workflow is live.
• Direct Tooling Product Management on vision, backlog, and adoption for embedding process into internal tools, in partnership with Tools Engineering, Data Visualization, and Atlassian architecture.
• Guide UI/UX for internal tools and BI surfaces so complex engineering and operational data is usable by technical and non-technical partners.
• Partner with AI Enablement so automation and AI-assisted workflows reinforce the same standards rather than creating a second operating system.
• Influence tooling and systems priorities so technology investment follows the operating model, not the other way around.
• Hire, coach, and performance-manage a distributed Process Engineering team: Tooling Product Management (United States), UI/UX for internal tools (India/Mexico), and Process and Data Audit (India/Mexico).
• Set priorities, goals, and an operating rhythm for the team. Create career paths for early- and mid-career talent.
• Build organizational capability in process design, workflow standards, and transformation leadership. Model F5 Behaviors.
• Drive adoption through communications, training, knowledge management, and measured change management not policy memos.
• Influence without direct authority across Directors and Senior Directors who own delivery; resolve barriers and keep shared priorities moving.
• Represent Engineering Operations in cross-functional forums and keep Product, Program Management, and engineering partners aligned.
• Collaborate and thrive in a fast-paced, high-performance environment.

Skills and Qualifications

Knowledge, Skills and Abilities

• Demonstrated ability to set process and operating-model strategy across team boundaries and influence senior engineering and product leadership.
• Judgment, discretion, structured thinking, and executive facilitation, with the ability to make senior leaders more effective without becoming a bottleneck.
• Proven success designing and improving business or engineering processes across complex, cross-functional organizations and embedding those processes in systems, not only in documents.
• Exceptional written, verbal, and presentation skills; able to translate complex information into practical recommendations for senior audiences and into standards engineers will actually use.
• Comfort working at the intersection of strategy, operations, and internal technology: workflow design, business requirements, Atlassian or equivalent platforms, automation, and BI/visualization.
• Experience hiring and leading mixed-seniority, geographically distributed teams, with a track record of coaching and setting a high quality bar.
• Analytical and data-literate: can baseline current state, define KPIs, and use evidence to decide what to standardize, automate, or stop doing.
• Change leadership without relying solely on authority: stakeholder management, conflict resolution, and the interpersonal skill to land decisions in a matrixed engineering organization.
• High agency in ambiguity; able to create order, prioritize ruthlessly, and follow through in a fast-paced environment.
• Handles confidential business and personnel information with professionalism.

Required

• Bachelor's degree in engineering, Computer Science, Business, Information Systems, Operations, or a related field, or equivalent experience.
• Typically, 10+ years of progressive experience in engineering operations, business systems and workflow, process excellence, strategy and operations, technical program management, management consulting, or a related discipline, including 3+ years leading people.
• Experience in a software product engineering environment.
• Demonstrated experience designing standards, workflows, or operating processes and driving adoption across multiple teams or business units.
• Experience partnering with Product, Engineering, and technology or tools organizations to deliver measurable outcomes.

Preferred

• Experience standing up a new function or team, or building capability in process design, workflow, or business systems.
• Familiarity with Atlassian (Jira, Confluence, or equivalent), workflow design, internal developer or operations tooling, and reporting/BI platforms.
• Experience with change management, enablement, and organization-wide adoption of new ways of working.
• Lean, Six Sigma, or comparable continuous-improvement training useful, not a substitute for shipping process into tools.
• Experience as a strategy and operations partner supporting a VP or SVP, or similar work translating leadership priorities into execution