Johan Laanstra
Principal Software Engineer at Microsoft
Seattle, Washington, United States
Summary
🤩
Rockstar🎓
Top SchoolJohan Laanstra is a Principal Software Engineer in Seattle with 14 years of experience building and shipping high-quality Windows applications and developer tooling, currently contributing to Phone Link. He combines deep systems and runtime knowledge with pragmatic app- and framework-level engineering, having owned inbox apps like Notepad and Alarms & Clock and led build/test infrastructure across multiple products. Johan is a strong C#/C++ engineer who also improves developer workflows—his open-source contributions to projects like microsoft/cppwinrt and xlang show a focus on build automation, NuGet packaging, and reliability fixes. He brings academic rigor from a TU Delft MS in Computer Science and a history of mentoring early-career engineers and driving cross-team collaboration. Notably, he has a track record of modernizing legacy codebases (e.g., adding Unix line-ending support to Notepad) and surfacing subtle correctness fixes across long-lived Microsoft products.
14 years of coding experience
12 years of employment as a software developer
Master of Science Computer Science - Software Engineering, Master of Science Computer Science - Software Engineering at Delft University of TechnologyVWO Nature and Technic, VWO Nature and Technic at Christelijk Gymnasium Beyers Naude
English, Dutch
Github Skills (20)
nuget10
c-language10
windows-runtime10
windowsrt10
net10
dotnet10
asp-net10
build-automation10
dotnet-core10
cprogramming-language10
csharp10
reactiveui10
winrt10
msbuild9
cross-platform8
Programming languages (5)
Github contributions (5)
microsoft/cppwinrt
Oct 2019 - Feb 2022
C++/WinRT
Role in this project:
Backend Developer & Automation Engineer
Backend Developer & Automation EngineerContributions:26 reviews, 61 commits, 79 PRs in 2 years 4 months
Contributions summary:Johan contributed to the C++/WinRT project by fixing methods, adding templates for static libraries, and removing unnecessary XAML includes, indicating work on the core library's functionality. They also added a C# runtime component to the test solution and addressed issues related to path configurations and dependency management, suggesting involvement in build processes and integration testing. Furthermore, the user implemented automated steps for Nuget package restore, indicating a focus on automating the build process.
cppc-plus-pluswindowswinrt
reactiveui/Akavache
Oct 2013 - Jul 2014
An asynchronous, persistent key-value store created for writing desktop and mobile applications, based on SQLite3. Akavache is great for both storing important data as well as cached local data that expires.
Role in this project:Back-end Developer
Back-end DeveloperContributions:98 commits in 9 months
Contributions summary:Johan made multiple commits focused on refactoring and improving the Akavache project. Their work involved removing outdated dependencies, fixing references to ReactiveUI, and streamlining the build process to reduce errors. Additionally, the user contributed to project organization through renaming files, adding configuration files, and updating packages across various project types, including WinRT and WP8. This suggests a focus on improving the project's maintainability and build stability.
expiresc-sharplocal-datapersistentcached
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