Zak Johnson
Principal Software Engineer at Propel, Inc
Oakland, California, United States
Summary
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RockstarZak Johnson is a Principal Software Engineer with 18 years of full-stack experience, currently leading platform and product engineering at Propel from Oakland. He blends hands-on craftsmanship—from infrastructure and backend systems to polished UX and animations—with a strong obsession for simplicity, whitespace, and clear writing. Zak has led and scaled engineering teams at Grammarly and Mixpanel, contributing to widely used open-source projects such as webassets and the official Mixpanel JavaScript client. He prioritizes empathetic team culture and hiring, turning complex problems into delightful, reliable user experiences. A former security engineer by trade, he still brings a pragmatic security-minded lens to product design and operational resilience.
18 years of coding experience
17 years of employment as a software developer
English
Stackoverflow
109reputation
7kreached
2answers
0questions
Github Skills (21)
javascript10
python10
css10
browser10
analytics10
jscript10
stylus10
sdk10
webassets10
mixpanel9
compass9
cookie9
buildx8
build-engine8
build28
Programming languages (18)
Github contributions (5)
mixpanel/mixpanel-js
Jul 2016 - Feb 2018
Official Mixpanel JavaScript Client Library
Role in this project:
Full-stack Developer
Full-stack DeveloperContributions:6 commits, 1 PR, 3 pushes in 1 year 6 months
Contributions summary:Zak contributed to the Mixpanel JavaScript client library, making several updates. These updates focused on enhancing the tracking functionality, specifically related to incrementing and managing counts associated with events. Additionally, the user was involved in a build process, as evidenced by the "build 2.8.2" commit, which likely involved minifying and packaging the JavaScript code for distribution. The changes included adjustments to how cookies were set and handled to store counts.
analyticsjavascript-clientbrowserclient-libraryjavascript
miracle2k/webassets
Jul 2011 - Jun 2012
Asset management for Python web development.
Role in this project:Full-stack Developer
Full-stack DeveloperContributions:6 commits in 11 months
Contributions summary:Zak significantly contributed to the `webassets` project by implementing and refining asset management features. They added a Stylus CSS filter, integrated Compass configuration options, and addressed issues with the PythonLoader. These changes involved both new feature additions and bug fixes across multiple files including those related to filters, tests, and documentation. The contributions demonstrate a focus on improving the project's capabilities.
pythondjango-frameworkpython-webpython-web-developmentasset
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