Director, Commercial Legal (Cloud & SaaS)

F5, Inc.; San Jose (CA); On-site; USD 278,000 - 418,000; Full time

Job summary

F5, Inc. is seeking a senior SaaS attorney to lead commercial legal strategy for a global cloud platform.

You will close high-value enterprise SaaS transactions, translate technical concepts into commercial terms, and collaborate with product, security, and executive teams to accelerate deal velocity while balancing risk. You will oversee a small team of contract managers, develop scalable playbooks, and shape privacy and data processing agreements.

Qualifications

• J.D. from an accredited law school and active bar membership in good standing in at least one U.S. jurisdiction.
• 10+ years of relevant legal experience including significant in-house SaaS negotiation.
• Strong understanding of privacy, cybersecurity, AI governance, and emerging technology/regulations (SOC 2, ISO 27001, PCI DSS 4.0, FedRAMP, HIPAA, GDPR, U.S. state/privacy law, EU AI Act, DORA).
• Deep SaaS commercial acumen: subscription economics, DPAs, SLAs, liability standards for major SaaS providers.

Responsibilities

• Drive and close high-value enterprise SaaS transactions with Fortune 500 customers, focusing on velocity and managing material risk.
• Translate product architecture into commercial commitments with Product, Security, and Product Counsel teams.
• Partner with leadership to identify and resolve blockers, accelerating deal velocity and scaling governance.
• Lead two contract managers as global SMEs, reviewing customer paper and guiding regional attorneys with scalable resources.
• Shape data governance, privacy, security commitments, and cross-border data transfer frameworks.
• Modernize deal velocity by optimizing playbooks and self-service contracting workflows.

Skills

Leadership

Ownership mindset

Deal execution

Pragmatic risk balancing

Technical fluency

Education

Juris Doctor (J.D.)

Job description

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.

The Opportunity

Are you a senior SaaS attorney looking to do more than just redline contracts? F5 is scaling our global application delivery and security SaaS platform, and we want a strategic, business-minded Director, Commercial Legal to join our elite North American commercial legal team. This is your opportunity to solve high-impact cloud contracting challenges, accelerate enterprise deal velocity, and directly help to shape the product roadmap of a global leader. You will leverage your transactional expertise to design scalable legal frameworks, establish global precedent for emerging SaaS offerings, drive proactive, solution-oriented business enablement and revenue momentum, and align enterprise legal strategy directly with product innovation.

What You’ll Do

• Drive Deal Velocity In Complex SaaS Negotiations: Drive and close high-value enterprise SaaS transactions with regulated Fortune 500 customers in financial services, healthcare, and the public sector, a significant share of them negotiated on the customer's own paper. Focus heavily on transactional efficiency, reducing sales friction, and closing deals quickly without compromising material risk.

• Translate Product Architecture into Commercial Commitments: Partner closely with Product Management, Information Security and Product Counsel teams during early-stage product design. Translate complex cloud infrastructure concepts such as multi-tenancy, data sovereignty, encryption, and telemetry into clear, defensible commercial terms and customer-facing commitments.

• Partner with Commercial Legal and Business Leadership: Collaborate closely with legal and business leaders to identify, elevate, and resolve systemic commercial negotiation blockers, helping drive deal velocity and scale enterprise data controls globally.

• Serve as the Global Center of Excellence: Lead a team of two commercial contract managers serving as global subject matter experts for F5 SaaS transactions. Your team will take first-pass review of incoming customer paper against F5's standard positions and approved fallbacks, guide commercial attorneys across regions, and triage escalations, developing scalable resources and playbooks to standardize our approach to complex cloud negotiations.

• Shape Data Governance, Privacy & Security Commitments: In collaboration with our Privacy and Cybersecurity teams, structure robust data processing agreements, security exhibits, and compliance frameworks that address cross-border data transfers, regulatory changes, and enterprise customer requirements.

• Modernize Deal Velocity: Continuously evaluate and optimize negotiation playbooks and self-service contracting workflows to accelerate sales cycles and unlock revenue while maintaining a pragmatic, commercial approach to risk.

What We're Looking For

• Legal Experience:

• Juris Doctor (J.D.) from an accredited law school and active bar membership in good standing in at least one U.S. jurisdiction.

• 10+ years of relevant legal experience, including significant in-house experience negotiating enterprise SaaS, cloud platform, and data processing agreements within peer technology companies, cloud-native competitors, or established enterprise vendors.

• Strong practical understanding of privacy, cybersecurity, AI governance, and emerging technology and AI regulations, including SOC 2, ISO 27001, PCI DSS 4.0, FedRAMP, HIPAA, GDPR and U.S. state privacy law, the EU AI Act and DORA.

• SaaS Commercial Acumen:

• Deep understanding of the SaaS business model, subscription economics, and market-standard contractual expectations, including DPAs, SLA structures, and liability standards common among major SaaS providers.

• Pragmatic Risk-Balancing & Deal Execution:

• A proven track record as a business enabler who prioritizes commercial velocity. Must demonstrate the ability to evaluate risk through a commercial lens offering creative, practical solutions to close deals efficiently.

• Technical Fluency:

• While you don’t need to be an engineer, you must be able to credibly discuss concepts like data residency, tenancy, encryption, and telemetry with both technical and non-technical stakeholders and translate them into contractual language.

• Leadership & Cross-Functional Influence:

• Proven ability to build trusted relationships across executive leadership, sales, product management, and engineering teams, as well as mentor junior legal team members, and direct experience managing or leading contract managers or other legal professionals.

• Ownership Mindset & Adaptability:

• Comfort with ambiguity in fast-paced, evolving multi-cloud landscape, with the initiative to build playbooks from the ground up where standard precedents do not yet exist.

Why This Role?

At F5, our legal team operates as a strategic partner in driving business growth. In this role, your success is measured by deal momentum and transactional efficiency. You will collaborate directly with senior business and legal leaders to scale F5 globally at pace, ensuring our legal strategy supports rapid SaaS market expansion. If you are a pragmatic, solution-oriented deal-closer who thrives on commercial velocity, practical risk-balancing, and shaping the future of a market-leading security cloud, this is your next career-defining move.

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: $278,400.00 - $417,600.00

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 [e-mail].