F5 headquarters in Seattle. Image courtesy of F5.
F5 headquarters in Seattle. Image courtesy of F5.

F5 Networks, the Seattle-based company that offers application delivery and security services for enterprise customers, has leased new office space in Seattle. The space consists of 20,000 square feet in the Elliott Bay Office Park at 300 Elliott Ave. West, near the company’s existing headquarters.

The move into the 36-year-old building will consolidate the F5 sales team in the new space. It will be completed this summer. The company will spend the interim months building out the space to “really feel like an F5 building,” a process that goes beyond just moving in desks and other office equipment, said company spokesman Nathan Misner.

The move is due to the rapid expansion of F5, which was founded in 1996 and now boasts a market value of $7.1 billion.

The company is hiring about 100 new people every quarter, Misner told GeekWire. It has expanded by 1,200 people across all of its offices in the last two-and-a-half years. The company needs more space, but wanted to keep its teams close together in buildings that still felt like they were part of the F5 community, Misner said.

The company anticipates adding more jobs across the board in this coming year, from software developers — especially in cloud and security — to customer support positions, Misner said.

“We’re committed to the Puget Sound and growing in the Seattle area,” Misner said. “There’s access to good talent, some of our biggest partners are here, and we were founded here….This is where we were born and bred and where we want to stay.”

And it is not the only tech company expanding on the flanks of Seattle’s Magnolia and Queen Anne neighborhoods. Expedia plans to move its headquarters from Bellevue to the former 40-acre Amgen facility along Elliott Bay in 2019.

F5 will be taking about half of one floor in the five-story building, with the option to expand should they need it, Misner said. The newly-leased space brings F5’s total office space in Seattle to around 320,000 square feet in Seattle and 15,000 square feet in Bellevue, serving 1,600 employees.

Elliott Bay Office Park is the current headquarters of Holland America Line, which is moving around the corner to a new building as F5 moves into the space. The news of the the new office space was first reported by The Puget Sound Business Journal.

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