Ryan Johnson
Staff Software Engineer at Mozilla
Portland, Oregon, United States
Summary
🤩
Rockstar🎓
Top SchoolRyan Johnson is a Staff Software Engineer in Portland with 13+ years building resilient, cloud-native platforms and developer tools, currently focused on Mozilla’s support site and MDN Web Docs. He blends deep backend expertise (Python, Django, Kubernetes, AWS) with hands-on front-end and CI/CD work, having helped transition MDN to a JAMstack architecture and led its migration into Kubernetes and CloudFront. A people-centered engineering manager by philosophy, he prioritizes team happiness, sustainable pace, and creative freedom while still delivering measurable operational improvements. His open-source contributions to high-profile MDN repositories span localization, content cleanup, macro rendering, and security fixes—reflecting both technical rigor and attention to international user experience. Unusually for an engineer of his seniority, he also holds an M.A. in Counseling Psychology, which informs his empathetic approach to leadership and collaboration.
13 years of coding experience
37 years of employment as a software developer
B.S.E.E., Electrical Engineering with Computer Engineering Emphasis, B.S.E.E., Electrical Engineering with Computer Engineering Emphasis at North Dakota State UniversityM.A., Counseling Psychology, M.A., Counseling Psychology at University of St. Thomas
English, Spanish
Github Skills (34)
content-management-system10
javascript10
apidoc10
python10
django10
l20n10
testing10
css10
mdc10
mdns10
security10
api10
mdt10
content-management10
html10
Programming languages (10)
Github contributions (5)
mdn/kumascript
Oct 2016 - Dec 2020
Bringing scripting to the wiki bears.
Role in this project:
Back-end Developer
Back-end DeveloperContributions:13 reviews, 922 commits, 276 PRs in 4 years 2 months
Contributions summary:Ryan focused on improving the `mdn/kumascript` repository by addressing bugs related to macro loading from the local filesystem. The user implemented file loading functionalities by utilizing the "FileLoader" class, incorporating unit tests and making code modifications in several JavaScript files. These changes reflect a strong understanding of software engineering principles and contribute to the improvement and stability of the wiki's scripting engine.
wikibearsscriptingbringing
mdn/kuma
Oct 2016 - Nov 2021
The project that powers MDN.
Role in this project:Back-end Developer
Back-end DeveloperContributions:146 reviews, 1002 commits, 1401 PRs in 5 years 2 months
Contributions summary:Ryan focused on enhancing the functionality of the MDN Web Docs project. The contributions include improvements to error handling, additions to the email functionality by adding a locale to the subject, and the addition of a new endpoint. These updates involved modifications to Python, Django, and template files to support the new features. Furthermore, the user made contributions to refine features related to documentation.
reactpythonsasscssjavascript
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