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.

Job Title: Prompt Engineer

Role Summary:

F5 is seeking a creative, analytical, and detail-oriented Prompt Engineer to join our innovative engineering team. As a Prompt Engineer, you will design, develop, test, and optimize prompts to interact securely and effectively with Large Language Models (LLMs) and emerging agentic AI systems. This role is at the forefront of F5's AI development strategy, contributing directly to our AI-powered platforms by enhancing security testing, addressing adversarial challenges, and driving innovation in natural language processing.

Your efforts will ensure the robustness, reliability, and safety of our AI solutions, enabling customers to confidently adopt AI and other emerging technologies while navigating the complexities of modern AI security landscapes.

Key Responsibilities:

Prompt Design and Optimization

Develop, refine, and iterate on high-performing prompts for Large Language Models (LLMs) to achieve specific goals, such as security testing, red-teaming exercises (e.g., simulating prompt injection, jailbreaking, or data elicitation), or validating AI defensive measures.

Experiment with and implement advanced prompting methodologies, including few-shot prompting, chain-of-thought prompting, role-playing, and structured prompts to maximize AI interaction efficiency and effectiveness.

Identify failure modes, unexpected outputs, or vulnerabilities in LLM behavior and address these through systematic prompt refinement and optimization.

Collaboration and Integration

Work closely with AI Researchers and Engineering teams to integrate effective prompts into F5's AI security platforms and other advanced ML-based systems.

Assist in the design and implementation of supportive tools, workflows, and processes that enhance prompt engineering capabilities.

Build and maintain a comprehensive internal library of effective prompting strategies, techniques, and best practices, fostering knowledge sharing across teams.

Research and Development

Stay informed about cutting-edge developments in LLMs, prompt engineering strategies, and AI security advancements, applying these learnings to improve system performance.

Participate in testing and evaluating the security implications and effectiveness of new prompting strategies across various AI systems and use cases.

Contribute to internal knowledge bases by documenting successful strategies, experimental results, and key insights.

Required Qualifications:

Educational Background:

Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Data Science, Linguistics, Cognitive Science, Human-Computer Interaction, or a related field; or equivalent practical experience in prompt engineering and LLM optimization.

Technical and Analytical Expertise:

Proven hands-on experience in prompt design and refinement for large language models (e.g., GPT series, Claude, Llama, etc.).

Strong understanding of LLM capabilities, limitations, common failure modes, and alignment strategies.

Familiarity with prompt engineering techniques including few-shot prompting, structured designs, and context injection.

Problem-Solving and Communication Skills:

Excellent analytical and critical-thinking skills with meticulous attention to detail when troubleshooting complex LLM behaviors.

Strong verbal and written communication skills, capable of translating technical outputs into actionable insights for diverse audiences.

Passion for AI and NLP:

Strong interest and understanding of Artificial Intelligence, Natural Language Processing (NLP), and AI-driven security concepts and mechanisms.

Preferred Qualifications:

Demonstrable experience in applying prompt engineering specifically for AI security, red-teaming, or vulnerability assessment purposes.

Background in working with or developing frameworks for agentic AI systems (e.g., LangChain, Auto-GPT).

Proficiency in basic scripting for automation (e.g., using Python) to streamline prompt testing or analysis.

Familiarity with evaluation techniques for LLM performance and safety, such as detecting adversarial weaknesses or other failure modes.

Experience working with APIs for major LLM providers.

Ability to showcase creative and effective prompt engineering in a portfolio of examples.

Understanding of adversarial attacks against NLP models, such as prompt injection or poisoning attacks, and mitigation strategies.

What Success Looks Like:

Delivering high-quality prompts that improve the effectiveness, reliability, and security of AI systems in production environments.

Collaborating effectively with cross-functional teams to integrate innovative prompt engineering strategies into F5’s AI platforms.

Staying ahead of industry trends and emerging developments in the LLM landscape by applying cutting-edge methodologies to projects at F5.

Building a culture of innovation and collaboration by sharing knowledge, strategies, and new approaches with internal teams.

Why Join F5?

At F5, we are driven by the mission to empower our customers with secure and scalable solutions in an increasingly AI-powered world. Joining our Prompt Engineering team means you’ll have the opportunity to:

Influence the direction of cutting-edge AI initiatives and tools that tackle real-world security challenges.

Work in a collaborative, inclusive, and innovation-driven environment that values diversity of thought and expertise.

Gain access to resources, mentorship, and opportunities to advance your knowledge and career in AI, LLMs, and NLP.

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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.

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 accommodations@f5.com.