Robin Johnson
About Robin Johnson
Robin Johnson is a seasoned developer and infrastructure lead with over 20 years of experience at Gentoo Linux, where he also serves as Foundation Treasurer. He currently works as a Senior Infrastructure Engineer at CoreWeave and has a strong background in optimizing development processes and debugging complex network configurations.
Work at Gentoo
Robin Johnson has been a key contributor at Gentoo Linux since 2003, serving in various roles including Developer, Infrastructure Lead, and Foundation Treasurer. Over the span of 21 years, Johnson has been actively involved in critical teams, focusing on infrastructure projects such as LDAP, CVS, and base-system initiatives. Johnson previously held positions as Foundation Trustee and Council Member, contributing to the governance and operational aspects of the Gentoo Foundation. Johnson's efforts include optimizing bookkeeping and tax processes for the foundation.
Current Role at CoreWeave
Since 2023, Robin Johnson has been employed as a Senior Infrastructure Engineer (Storage) at CoreWeave. In this role, Johnson applies extensive knowledge in infrastructure management and storage solutions, leveraging skills developed over years of experience in the tech industry. This position marks a recent addition to Johnson's professional portfolio, complementing a long-standing career in infrastructure development.
Education and Expertise
Robin Johnson studied Information Technology at TechBC, earning a Bachelor of Science degree from 2001 to 2005. Johnson also attended Burnaby North from 1999 to 2001 and Durban High School from 1996 to 1998. This educational background laid the foundation for a career focused on infrastructure and development. Johnson possesses expertise in optimizing CI pipelines, debugging complex network configurations, and understanding system calls across various programming languages.
Previous Experience
Prior to current roles, Robin Johnson worked at DigitalOcean in various capacities, including Senior Engineer II (Storage Edge) from 2021 to 2023 and Senior Engineer (Spaces) from 2018 to 2021. Johnson also served as a Ceph RADOSGW Developer & Sysadmin at DreamHost from 2015 to 2018. Additional experience includes consulting for Global Netoptex, Inc. and serving as a Research Assistant at Simon Fraser University - Surrey. This diverse background contributes to a well-rounded skill set in infrastructure and development.
Professional Contributions
Robin Johnson has made significant contributions to the development and infrastructure of Gentoo Linux over the past two decades. Johnson advocates for rapid incremental deployments and has a strong ability to solve complex problems in new domains. Johnson's experience includes handling layer 2 issues, BGP with ECMP, and L4 load balancing with Katran, as well as addressing L7 issues like HTTP/2 framing bugs and gRPC. These contributions reflect a commitment to enhancing development speed while ensuring deployment safety.