Portfolio
Vanessa Johnson
Android Engineer
Building mobile experiences at The New York Times. Passionate about clean code, user experience, and the Android ecosystem.
Speaker Scout
An app for conference speakers to find conferences they can present at. Filter and discover speaking opportunities based on talk length, travel and accommodation coverage, location, and more!
Recent Activity
Current Focus
Building mobile experiences using Jetpack Compose, Kotlin, GraphQL, Retrofit, and MVVM architecture with repositories and use cases. Contributed to major releases including the friends tab launch. Tech led multiple features including the ConnectionsBot integration, a new subscription message, the strands archive, and completed the summer intern project I mentored delivering dark mode to the apps.
Skills
Interests
More Projects
Speaking Highlights
Open Source
Contributing to detekt and ktlint plugins, improving code quality tooling for the Kotlin ecosystem through Google Summer of Code 2025.
Experience
My journey in software engineering
Android Engineer
The New York Times
Building mobile experiences using Jetpack Compose, Kotlin, GraphQL, Retrofit, and MVVM architecture with repositories and use cases. Contributed to major releases including the friends tab launch. Tech led multiple features including the ConnectionsBot integration, a new subscription message, the strands archive, and completed the summer intern project I mentored delivering dark mode to the apps.
Android Engineering Intern
The New York Times
Utilized Jetpack Compose in Kotlin and developed a new UI that would encourage more subscription sign ups in the consumer facing games app based on Figma designs. Implemented a post login/ post registration offer that pulled data from firebase to populate the information on the card to increase the subscription sign ups which is at 100% roll out that improved conversion in the app by 31%.
Software Engineering Intern
Zocdoc
Developed and integrated new product features in the existing android mobile application using Kotlin that are were released into production that affected over 200,000 users. Enhanced the Zocdoc application by implementing an act fast banner with XML, fragments, and activities that used a lottie animation to alert the user that the appointments were limited for that current day or the following day.
Speaking
Sharing knowledge at conferences & in workshops
What if Your API Spoke Accessibility?
APIDays Paris 2025
APIs shape the user experience long before UI code is written, but accessibility is almost always left until the end. This talk shows how to embed accessibility metadata directly into GraphQL schemas using custom directives and code generation, enabling clients (Android, iOS, and web) to get accessible defaults from day one. We'll cover directive design, exposing metadata in generated types, and how frontends like Jetpack Compose or SwiftUI consume it. A repository with working code examples will be provided.
Building Inclusive Jetpack Compose Apps: Leveraging Kotlin and the Accessibility Scanner
Droidcon Italy 2025
Accessibility is a growing and important aspect in app development that isn't always prioritized. This talk explores how Jetpack Compose's Kotlin-based declarative approach offers a simplified path to building inclusive UIs. Learn about Kotlin-based Semantics, navigational cues, and how to leverage the Accessibility Scanner to quickly identify and address common accessibility issues. Discover straightforward changes that yield dramatic improvements for user experience, making your apps more user-friendly for a wide range of individuals.
Code & Hydrate: Build a Water Intake Tracker App (Android Edition)
Mentor Me Collective Workshop
Led a beginner friendly workshop on Android app development, teaching participants to build a water intake tracker app using Kotlin, XML UI design, and local storage with SharedPreferences.
What if GraphQL Knew Accessibility
GraphQLConf 2025
What if your GraphQL schema could do more than provide data? What if it could help your app be more accessible from the start? This lightning talk explores embedding accessibility metadata directly into GraphQL schemas. Inspired by Kotlin semantics in Jetpack Compose, we'll examine annotating fields with labels, roles, or screen reader hints that support screen readers, improve navigation, and power automated accessibility testing. This is a call to rethink the developer experience and treat accessibility as a first-class concern, reimagining GraphQL not just as a data layer, but as an inclusive design enabler.
Building Inclusive Jetpack Compose Apps: Leveraging Kotlin and the Accessibility Scanner
KotlinConf 2025
Accessibility is a growing and important aspect in app development that isn't always prioritized. Google's efforts include making apps more accessible through Jetpack Compose, their new standard for building UIs. Jetpack Compose's Kotlin-based declarative approach offers a simplified path to building inclusive UIs. Within Jetpack Compose, powerful tools like the Accessibility Scanner can quickly identify and address common accessibility issues, improving the overall user experience. This talk demonstrates that straightforward changes yield dramatic improvements, showing concrete strategies to increase inclusivity in your projects.
Projects
A showcase of my work
Speaker Scout
An app for conference speakers to find conferences they can present at. Filter and discover speaking opportunities based on talk length, travel and accommodation coverage, location, and more!
Kotlin Code Quality with Problems API
activeGoogle Summer of Code 2025 project integrating the new Problems API in detekt and ktlint plugins to improve code quality tooling and provide better developer experience.
GutFeeling
activeA gut health app that helps you track your meals, drinks, supplements, and snacks. This app will help you also track your mood, bowel movements, water intake, and more that would be useful for your doctor during your appointments. All in all, this app will help you on your gut health journey which will also include suggestions for de-stressers, supplements that you can try before going to medications, and it will utilize the power of AI to identify changes that can be made in your diet.
Gemini Collaboration IDE
completedThis is an iOS application that acts as an IDE that supports Python code. Developers are able to collaborate on the same code and see each other's real time updates. They can also utilize the Gemini feature of the app to get code that they may need and ask questions about the code they wrote. Firebase is used for the real time updates, saving on the code that was written, and keeping track of all the projects that a user has after they have logged in through authentication.
Get in Touch
Let's connect and build something amazing
Let's Connect
I'm always interested in new opportunities, speaking engagements, and collaborations. Feel free to reach out!