Erik Johnston
Toolpusher at Valaris Limited
United Kingdom
Summary
🤩
Rockstar🎓
Top SchoolErik Johnston is an experienced toolpusher and mechanical engineer with 11 years delivering safe, efficient drilling operations on jack-up rigs across South East Asia, now leading operations at Valaris. He combines deep hands-on rig-floor leadership—covering MPD, UBD, HPHT and well completions—with formal MEng mechanical training, giving him rare visibility into both operational decision-making and equipment limitations. Equally comfortable with crew management and technical maintenance, he has a track record of optimizing drilling parameters and preserving well integrity under challenging conditions. Unusually for a senior offshore leader, Erik is also an active open-source software contributor with back-end work on notable Matrix projects (including matrix-rust-sdk and synapse) and tooling like rustfmt and twisted, reflecting a habit of pragmatic problem solving across disciplines. This blend of rigorous engineering, operational leadership and software craftsmanship makes him adept at bridging operational needs with technical solutions.
12 years of coding experience
1 year of employment as a software developer
MEng, Mechanical Engineering, MEng, Mechanical Engineering at University of Strathclyde
Github Skills (70)
apn10
postgresql10
python10
python-asyncio10
testing10
keyboard-events10
javas10
twisted10
specification10
appsettings10
android-settings10
javascript10
matrix10
async10
memory-management10
Programming languages (15)
Github contributions (5)
matrix-org/synapse
Aug 2014 - Jan 2023
Synapse: Matrix homeserver written in Python/Twisted.
Role in this project:
Back-end Developer
Back-end DeveloperContributions:185 releases, 2804 reviews, 8547 commits in 8 years 6 months
Contributions summary:Erik's contributions focused on implementing and modifying core functionality for the Synapse Matrix homeserver, specifically related to push notifications and device management. They modified test code to validate edge cases, and added code to address specific issues in the federation client, the admin API, and the device inbox functionality. Their work included the implementation of fixes to enhance database performance and improve the handling of room members, demonstrating a focus on the core architecture of the project.
homeserverpythonmatrix-org
matrix-org/sygnal
Jan 2019 - Mar 2021
Sygnal: reference Push Gateway for Matrix
Role in this project:Back-end & DevOps Engineer
Back-end & DevOps EngineerContributions:3 releases, 34 reviews, 18 commits in 2 years 2 months
Contributions summary:Erik primarily contributed to the Sygnal project by implementing features related to metrics collection using Prometheus and Sentry. They added HTTP connection pooling for Firebase Cloud Messaging (FCM) to improve performance. Further, the user updated the project to use Twisted and Python 3.7, refactored the codebase and also included updates for APNs support. Additionally, the user fixed a race condition when using HTTP proxies within the project.
push-gatewaypythonpushgatewaymatrix
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