Loren Johnson
Profile
Product-minded senior software engineer with 20+ years of full-stack experience building collaboration platforms and knowledge systems, plus growing hands-on experience with AI-assisted workflows. Known as a highly trusted engineering partner to product managers, with strong ability to translate product intent into shipped features using React/TypeScript/Node. AI-assisted workflows increasingly strengthen my product-thinking and end-to-end execution speed, with a purposeful deep-focus approach to delivery.
Experience
- Built and evolved self-hosted Wikibase Suite for MediaWiki users in the GLAM sector, improving real-world usability for knowledge graph adoption.
- Delivered a Docker Compose-based installation stack for VPS deployments, including custom container images that package MediaWiki and Wikibase into a practical setup.
- Helped modernize a community-used stack into a more current and maintainable platform while shipping at community pace.
- Developed federation capabilities that let Wikibase instances reference each other through federated properties and values.
- Improved workflows for large-scale data imports and collaborated directly with community members to prioritize roadmap decisions.
- Led architecture and significant refactoring of the React Native application to improve maintainability and delivery velocity.
- Shipped full-stack product features across Node.js, GraphQL, React, and React Native, with primary day-to-day focus on mobile product development.
- Partnered with product stakeholders in a remote-first environment to deliver iterative releases.
- Coordinated a cross-functional UI team of 8 across multiple products.
- Owned scope, prioritization, sprint planning, and execution flow.
- Led delivery across a distributed team and drove improvements in quality and shared ownership.
- Built core features in React, React Native, and Node.js.
- Senior Software Engineer, Makerspace.com (Maker Media), 2015 - 2016
- Lead Software Engineer, MyHabitJournal.com (Habitworks), 2014 - 2015
- Senior Ruby on Rails Developer, Motista, 2012 - 2014
Selected AI and Product Work
- Hypnograph (creative video tooling): building software focused on creative video workflows for artists.
- Local agentic AI apps: prototyping local-first tools that transform brain dumps into structured Markdown knowledge bases.
- Agentic AI guardrails: exploring safety-oriented patterns to reduce risk while preserving productivity, including experiments with LangChain/LangGraph-style workflows.
Skills
- Frontend: React, React Native, TypeScript, JavaScript
- Backend: Node.js, GraphQL, Ruby on Rails, API design
- Data and Infrastructure: Postgres, MySQL, Docker, VPS deployments
- Ways of working: product thinking, rapid prototyping, iterative shipping, purposeful deep-focus, strong product-manager partnership, cross-functional collaboration
Education
Seattle Pacific University - BA in Computer Science (Business emphasis)
Outside Work
Filmmaker and dancer based in Berlin. I recharge through time outdoors, especially kayaking, hiking, biking, and being in forests and water whenever possible.