Principal HR Business Partner, M&A

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.

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.

At F5, 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.

Principal HR Business Partner, Mergers & Acquisitions Reporting to: Director, Business Partners, Product Organization

Position Summary The Principal HR Business Partner, Mergers & Acquisitions serves as a senior strategic partner to Product Organization leaders, helping turn business priorities into people and organization strategies that enable performance, growth, and change. This role combines leadership of the People strategy for F5's mergers, acquisitions, and other strategic transactions with responsibility for supporting an assigned client organization within F5’s Product Organization. The balance between these responsibilities will evolve based on business and transaction activity.

As an HRBP, this individual will partner with senior leaders on organizational effectiveness, talent, workforce strategy, leadership, culture, and change. When M&A activity arises, this role will serve as F5’s People lead for the transaction, owning the People strategy from diligence and pre-close planning through Day 1 and post-close integration. The role will assess talent, culture, leadership, and organization design and use those insights to shape the integration, making adjustments along the way to help deliver the intended outcomes of the transaction.

What You'll Do Mergers & Acquisitions

• Serve as F5’s People lead for acquisitions and other strategic transactions, working closely with business leaders, Corporate Development, Legal, Finance, HRBPs, and People & Culture specialist teams.
• Translate the goals of each transaction into a People strategy that addresses organization, leadership, talent, workforce, culture, employee experience, and change.
• Lead the People component of due diligence, including an assessment of talent, leadership, culture, organization design, and workforce considerations, helping leaders understand associated opportunities and risks.
• Develop and lead People integration strategies and plans, including key decisions, milestones, dependencies, governance, and measures of success.
• Advise leaders on organization design, leadership structure, critical talent, retention, workforce transitions, and other people decisions needed to deliver the intended outcomes of the transaction.
• Lead the People and organizational change aspects of integration, creating clarity for leaders and employees while supporting engagement and business continuity.
• Bring together HRBPs and specialist teams across Total Rewards, Talent Acquisition, Employee Relations, HR Operations, Benefits, Mobility, People Systems, Communications, and other areas to ensure a coordinated approach.
• Build and continuously improve F5's M&A People playbook, tools, governance, and practices, applying lessons learned to strengthen future transactions.

Strategic HR Business Partnership

• Serve as a trusted advisor to senior leaders within the Product Organization, developing a deep understanding of their business, organization, talent, and priorities and turning that understanding into effective people strategies.
• Partner with leaders on organization design and effectiveness, workforce planning, talent and succession, performance, leadership effectiveness, employee engagement, and organizational change.
• Help leaders identify the capabilities, skills, talent, and organizational structures needed to deliver current and future business priorities and develop strategies to address gaps.
• Coach and advise senior leaders to strengthen individual, team, and organizational effectiveness, constructively challenging thinking and bringing a broader F5 perspective to complex business and people decisions.
• Use business, workforce, talent, and employee feedback and data to identify trends, understand root causes, anticipate organizational needs, and inform decisions and people strategies.
• Provide guidance on complex employee relations and organizational matters, partnering with Employee Relations, Legal, and other experts as appropriate to manage employee and business risk.
• Partner across HR to bring the right expertise and solutions to business needs and create a consistent experience for leaders and employees.

How You'll Lead Success in this role requires modeling F5's BeF5 and LeadF5 behaviors in both day-to-day business partnership and high-stakes transactions. This means operating with integrity and an owner's mindset, navigating change with agility, seeking diverse perspectives, and putting people and customers at the center of decisions. It also means creating clarity when things are ambiguous, building alignment across teams, recognizing and developing talent, constructively challenging the status quo, and helping people and organizations thrive through change.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Human Resources, Business Administration, or a related discipline; advanced degree preferred.
• 8+ years of progressive, hands-on HR experience, including at least 5 years in a strategic HR Business Partner role, ideally within a complex, global, technology-driven organization.
• HR certification such as SPHR, PHR, or SHRM-SCP strongly preferred.
• Demonstrated expertise in organizational design and effectiveness, complex employee relations, talent management, workforce planning, and organizational transformation.
• Experience supporting M&A, integrations, or other significant organizational transformations, with a strong interest in building deeper M&A expertise.
• Proven ability to advise and influence senior leaders, constructively challenge thinking, and navigate complex, sensitive, and confidential business and people decisions.
• Strong business acumen and analytical skills, with the ability to turn workforce and talent insights into meaningful business decisions and actions.
• Demonstrated ability to lead through influence and bring together HR and cross-functional partners across geographies and organizational boundaries.
• Experience working with HR technology platforms such as Workday and service management systems such as ServiceNow.
• Excellent communication, relationship-building, change leadership, and executive consulting skills.

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.

The annual base pay for this position is: $167,200.00 - $250,800.00 F5 maintains broad salary ranges for its roles in order to account for variations in knowledge, skills, experience, geographic locations, and market conditions, as well as to reflect F5’s differing products, industries, and lines of business. The pay range referenced is as of the time of the job posting and is subject to change.

You may also be offered incentive compensation, bonus, restricted stock units, and benefits. More details about F5’s benefits can be found at the following link: https://www.f5.com/company/careers/benefits. F5 reserves the right to change or terminate any benefit plan without notice.

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 [email protected].