About

Garrett Johnston is a highly experienced Software Engineer with over 8 years of relevant experience in the field. Currently working at NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory as a Software Engineer, Garrett has developed core components of JPL's institutional search engine used lab-wide by over 6000 users. He has managed Elasticsearch indices/analyzers, optimizing for speed and relevance, and worked with customers to onboard new data sources. Garrett has also led the development of search admin interface using Python Flask, React, and Elasticsearch. In addition, he led a small team that developed JPL travel insights web application to assist JPL executive leadership to understand strategic partnerships using data analysis. The initial release was a very quick turnaround (~7 weeks) and demanded a fast pace. He built a faceted search interface to search over 10,000s of records of travel data using Polymer JS and Elasticsearch. He also built data analytics visualizations for travel reports per partner using D3.js. Garrett has also created a web app for staff assistants to track the people/orgs they support, and integrated this data with the people-search feature in JPL's institutional search engine using Python Flask, PolymerJS, and Elasticsearch. He has developed RESTful open API of JPL institutional data powered by graph database using Python Flask, ArangoDB, and Swagger/OpenAPI spec. Garrett's past work experience includes working as an Android Developer Intern at Citrix and as a Teaching Assistant at UCLA Department of Computer Science. As a TA of Computer Organization, he taught fundamental concepts of computer architecture including binary/floating point encoding, basic data types, assembly language, stack/heap, caches, virtual memory, and thread/process control. Garrett holds a Master of Science (M.S.) in Computer Science from the University of California, Los Angeles, and a Bachelor of Science (B.S.) in Computer Science and Mathematical Sciences from the University of California, Santa Barbara. He has a strong tech stack that includes software engineering, search, Elasticsearch, Flask, Python, web, CI/CD, Kubernetes, Docker, Javascript, Jenkins, DevOps, frontend, backend, and Android. Overall, Garrett is a skilled and experienced software engineer with a strong background in developing complex search engines and web applications. He is passionate about using data analysis to help organizations make informed decisions and has a proven track record of delivering high-quality results in a fast-paced environment.