Head of Crisis Management

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.

Position Overview

The Head of Crisis Management is a high-visibility leadership role responsible for ensuring the organization can respond rapidly decisively and effectively to events that threaten business operations organizational reputation or stakeholder safety. This leader owns the complete crisis management lifecyclefrom preparedness and planning through response recovery and post-crisis improvement. As the designated incident commander for enterprise-level events this role maintains direct access to the SVP and C-Suite for immediate escalation serving as the calm center of organizational response when crises unfold. With oversight of reputational resilience and integration across legal HR and communications functions this position ensures that crisis response protects not only operational continuity but the organizations most valuable intangible assets.

Key Responsibilities

• Crisis Management Plan ownership: Develop maintain and continuously improve the enterprise Crisis Management Plan framework and supporting procedures.
• Crisis Management Team leadership: Lead the Crisis Management Team (CMT) during declared crises coordinating cross-functional response and ensuring unified command.
• Incident command: Serve as incident commander for enterprise-level events directing response activities allocating resources and making time-critical decisions under pressure.
• Executive crisis exercises: Design and execute executive-level crisis exercises including tabletop discussions functional drills and full-scale simulations that test decision-making at the highest levels.
• Crisis declaration protocols: Establish clear crisis declaration criteria and escalation protocols that enable rapid mobilization without unnecessary false alarms.
• Stakeholder notification: Own stakeholder notification processes tools and templates ensuring timely accurate communication to all affected parties during crisis events.
• Cross-functional coordination: Coordinate crisis response activities with Legal Human Resources Corporate Communications and other key functions to ensure integrated consistent response.
• External vendor management: Manage relationships with external crisis support vendors including crisis communications firms forensic investigators and specialized response consultants.
• Post-crisis review: Conduct comprehensive post-crisis reviews capturing lessons learned and driving improvement actions that strengthen future response capabilities.
• 24/7 response capability: Maintain around-the-clock crisis response capability with defined on-call rotations escalation paths and mobilization procedures.
• Reputational resilience oversight: Provide dotted-line oversight of Reputational Resilience domain ensuring crisis communications and reputation protection are integrated into response plans.
• Executive interface: Interface directly with executives and board members during crisis situations providing situational awareness decision support and recommendations.
• Command center operations: Manage crisis command center and war room operations ensuring facilities technology and protocols are ready for immediate activation.

Required Skills & Qualifications

• Crisis management expertise: 12 years of progressive experience in crisis management emergency management or organizational response leadership within complex enterprise environments.
• Response leadership: 7 years of leadership experience managing crisis response teams with demonstrated ability to lead under pressure and make critical decisions with incomplete information.
• Proven crisis experience: Demonstrated experience leading organizational response to significant crises including cyber incidents operational disruptions reputational events or natural disasters.
• Executive presence: Exceptional executive presence and communication skills with ability to brief C-Suite and board members clearly and confidently during high-stress situations.
• Incident command proficiency: Strong experience with Incident Command System (ICS) National Incident Management System (NIMS) or equivalent crisis management frameworks.
• Cross-functional influence: Ability to coordinate and influence across Legal HR Communications IT and business functions without direct authority during crisis situations.
• Exercise design expertise: Experience designing and facilitating executive-level crisis exercises that challenge participants and reveal organizational vulnerabilities.
• Media and communications savvy: Understanding of crisis communications principles media dynamics and reputation management strategies.
• Education: Bachelors degree required; Masters degree in emergency management business administration or related field preferred.
• Certifications: CBCP CEM or equivalent crisis/emergency management certification required; ICS certifications and crisis communications training highly desirable.

Desired Attributes

• Calm under pressure leader who maintains composure and clarity when others are overwhelmed serving as the stabilizing force during chaotic situations.
• Decisive decision-maker who can synthesize incomplete information rapidly and commit to courses of action when delay creates greater risk.
• Natural communicator who can translate complex evolving situations into clear actionable guidance for diverse audiences from frontline teams to board members.
• Relationship architect who builds trust and credibility before crises occur enabling effective coordination when events unfold.
• Continuous learner who studies crisis events across industries extracting lessons and adapting organizational capabilities to emerging threat patterns.

Future Vision (35 Years)

• AI-enhanced situational awareness: Leverage artificial intelligence and real-time data aggregation to provide commanders with comprehensive situational awareness and decision support during events.
• Predictive crisis intelligence: Implement predictive analytics that identify emerging crisis indicators enabling proactive response mobilization before events fully materialize.
• Virtual command center: Deploy fully virtual crisis command capabilities enabling distributed response teams to coordinate effectively regardless of physical location.
• Automated stakeholder communications: Implement intelligent notification systems that automatically tailor crisis communications to stakeholder segments based on role location and impact.
• Immersive simulation training: Utilize advanced simulation technologies to create realistic crisis scenarios that train executives and response teams without operational risk.
• Integrated resilience response: Achieve seamless integration across crisis management business continuity disaster recovery and cyber responseeliminating silos and enabling unified organizational response.

Impact of the Role

This role serves as the organizations shield during its most challenging moments ensuring that when crises strike response is swift coordinated and effective. As the leader of enterprise crisis response the Head of Crisis Management directly impacts the organizations ability to protect employee safety preserve customer trust maintain stakeholder confidence and safeguard organizational reputation. Through rigorous preparation realistic exercises and seamless cross-functional coordination this leader ensures that crises are contained rather than compoundedtransforming potentially existential events into demonstrations of organizational an era of escalating threats and instantaneous scrutiny this position determines whether the organization emerges from crises stronger or diminished.

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.

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 F5s 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 F5s benefits can be found at the following link: 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 @) or auto email notification from Workday (ending with or @).

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 .