Inside innovation at F5: Joel Moses on building what’s next

F5 Newsroom Staff

This blog post is the second in a series profiling F5ers driving innovation.

When F5 Vice President of Strategic Engineering Joel Moses was five- or six-years old, his father handed him a broken alarm clock, a screwdriver, and a piece of advice: “Don’t just take parts off of it. Think about what each part means to the clock.”

So, Joel did. As he disassembled the clock, he drew each piece in a notebook and wrote down his best guess about its role. When he found a fractured piece of coiled metal, he didn’t know yet that it was called a mainspring. But finding it gave him an opportunity to learn not only what the part was, but also concepts like potential energy and how individual components work together as a system.

That broken clock sparked a fascination that has followed Joel throughout his life. “I became fascinated with machines of all types,” he says. “Not just the job the machines performed, but how they performed it.”

Today, that same curiosity drives Joel's work as a Distinguished Engineer in F5's Office of the CTO, where he helps explore emerging technologies, shape future innovations, and find new ways to solve customer challenges.

Exploring what's next at F5

As part of F5's Office of the CTO, Joel helps direct efforts to investigate emerging technologies and standards, ensuring F5 is prepared to adopt or build upon them when the time is right.

His work involves developing proofs of concept, sharing technical insights with company leadership, and collaborating with customers to understand the challenges shaping their businesses.

It's a role that combines his lifelong curiosity with a commitment to meaningful innovation. “Innovation is a novel discovery that provides beneficial change,” Joel explains. “It's not enough to ask whether something can be done. One must also ask whether it should be done.”

That philosophy is central to how he approaches his work at F5. “We're refocusing on innovation, driving positive change in our industry,” he says. “Marketing likes to call it ‘building a better digital world.’ I like to call it doing meaningful work to improve everyone's lives!”

From F5 customer to Distinguished Engineer

Joel's connection to F5 began long before he joined the company. While leading Security Operations at Deloitte and advising its CIO and CTO on infrastructure, he encountered F5 products for the first time.

He was immediately fascinated by their programmability, flexibility, and ability to handle demanding traffic loads. He even developed some of the earliest iRules he shared with F5 DevCentral, several of which remain widely used around the world today.

That early experience eventually came full circle when Joel joined F5, where his contributions earned him the distinction of Distinguished Engineer.

The recognition is awarded through a formal nomination and peer review process that considers an individual's impact on F5 and the broader technology industry.

For Joel, however, innovation isn't just about his own achievements. It's also about helping others bring their ideas to life.

Tackling the challenges of AI

Today, much of Joel's focus is on the opportunities and challenges emerging from artificial intelligence.

AI-enabled attackers are changing the security landscape, requiring organizations to rethink traditional defenses and adapt to an accelerating pace of threats. At the same time, businesses are grappling with the growing cost of AI adoption.

Joel sees an opportunity for F5 to help customers address both challenges, particularly by improving the efficiency and cost of AI delivery without compromising the accuracy or quality of its outputs.

The speed of AI's evolution is especially remarkable to someone who has spent decades imagining its possibilities.

As a teenager reading Marvin Minsky's The Society of Mind, Joel dreamed of machines that could reason and communicate. At the time, he didn't expect to see that technology become a reality in his lifetime.

“We moved from theory to practicality, from science fiction to science fact, in record time,” he says.

Looking ahead, Joel is also watching developments in emerging computing architectures and quantum computing; technologies he believes could fundamentally reshape what's possible.

Creating opportunities for innovation

Throughout his career, Joel has received four patents covering technologies ranging from cryptographic exchanges and device policy enforcement to tunnel resource discovery. Many of these innovations are actively used in F5 products today.

But one of the most rewarding parts of his work is helping other F5ers become inventors themselves.

As part of the Office of the CTO, Joel serves on review boards that evaluate and strengthen patent submissions, helping employees develop their ideas through the patent process.

And innovation isn't limited to engineers. “At F5, anyone in any job throughout the company is invited to submit patent ideas,” Joel explains.

Employees can collaborate with reviewers to refine their inventions and receive financial rewards as they progress through the patent process.

It's an approach that reflects Joel's belief that great ideas can come from anywhere, and that creating opportunities for others is an important part of driving innovation forward.

Stay curious and creating impact

Despite decades of experience and industry recognition, Joel believes curiosity remains one of the most important qualities an innovator can possess.

His advice to the next generation of engineers is to never stop learning, even when others consider you an expert. “Take a few hours a week to make time to learn something new, whatever it may be,” he says.

And while technological curiosity drives discovery, Joel believes understanding people is what ultimately gives innovation its purpose. “Your innate curiosity about technology powers the innovative work you can do; your curiosity about others powers the value your work gives back to the world.”

Be sure to read our previous blog post in this series, profiling F5 Distinguished Engineer Lori MacVittie.

You can also explore more Life at F5 stories to meet the F5ers whose curiosity, ideas, and experiences continue to shape our business and what’s next.

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F5 Newsroom Staff

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