whoami
Hi, I’m Josh Johnson. I’m an engineering leader living in Raleigh, NC. Currently, I’m a Group Design Engineering Manager at Adobe focusing on implementations of the Spectrum Design System on Android, iOS, and Web.
I love making software. I’ve made a lot of products on iOS, macOS, Android, and the web. They all have unique design and engineering challenges that I love to work through. The first decade of my career I built AutoCAD plugins and web applications with C++ and .NET, while exploring macOS development as a hobby. When the iPhone shipped in 2007, I focused more deeply on learning Objective-C and Cocoa—and when it was released, Swift. Through my career, I’ve worked with many teams building well-designed products, worked at start-ups and large companies, and led teams of engineers. Previously, I was at Two Toasters (later Ticketmaster) and Grubhub. From 2010–2020, I was the organizer of Triangle CocoaHeads and NSCoder Nights and occasionally did conferences sessions about iOS engineering and engineering management.
I love creating and learning things. Making movies and YouTube videos, making photos, making music are currently in my head a lot. I’ve been learning how to create music—finally after 30 years of “playing guitar” I’m learning how to actually play guitar. Since 2024 I’ve been slowly learning how to repair and service wrist watches. There is also a lot of random ideas popping up like printing zines of my photos and a little 3D printing. That’s not even all the hobbies, learning languages and cooking pop up from time to time too—currently studying Italian 🇮🇹 language and cuisine.
Previously
2026
- July: Travel! First time to Pittsburgh 🇺🇸, Nice 🇫🇷, and Genoa 🇮🇹
- February: Still at Adobe, but role expanded to Group Design Engineering Manager leading implementation teams of the Spectrum Design System.
2025
- July: Travel! First time to London 🇬🇧, Seattle, and Vancouver 🇨🇦 this year.
- June: Started playing Guitar again. Traded my old guitars in for a new one and really learning this time. From actually learning music theory to taking lessons.
2024
- September: Started a new hobby, Watchmaking.
- January: Started new blog about learning Italian, cooking Italian, and Dual Citizenship
2023
- March: Started the process of gaining Italian Dual Citizenship and started learning Italian 🇮🇹
- YouTube channel changed from “Two Human People” to just Nat and Josh.
2022
- August: Joined Adobe as a Sr. Design Engineering Manager.
- Started a new portfolio site for my photography. My intent is to post photos that are my favorite or >4 stars in Lightroom there.
2021
- Continuing at Grubhub, role reframed from an iOS Team Lead to an Engineering Manager for Diner Apps. Working with teams of Android, iOS, and web engineers.
- Rebooted our YouTube channel “One Charge Trips” to be less EV focused and just be a place we can have fun making videos about travel. Now called “Two Human People”.
2020
- After 10 years, stepped down as organizer of Triangle Cocoa Meetup
- May: Started learning Japanese 🇯🇵
2019
- November: Visited Kyiv, Ukraine and started learning Ukrainian 🇺🇦
- Relaunched One Charge Trips as a YouTube channel
- Built a new web portfolio for aravind.media.
- Worked on production and post-production on Aravind Ragupathi’s short film, “8:46”.
- Joined Grubhub as an iOS Team Lead.
2017
- Started One Charge Trips making trips from our home to nearby areas on a single charge of our electric vehicles.
- Speaker at two local meetups—a “meetup crossover”—CocoaHeads and TriDroid talking about Cross Platform development.
- Joined Highrise as Lead Mobile Developer.
- Relaunched CocoaHeads.TV.
2016
- Shipped open source theme, “internet weblog” for the Hugo static generator.
2015
- Joined BA3 as Senior Software Developer.
- Speaker at 360|iDev about being a manager.
- Attended WWDC 2015
- Started learning German 🇩🇪
- Two Toasters acquired by Ticketmaster; continued leading the new Ticketmaster Mobile Studio development team.
2014
- Started leading the iOS (and later Android) team at Two Toasters as Director of Development.
- Speaker at 360|iDev Min about using HealthKit.
- Speaker at CocoaConf Mini in Raleigh about Working with Web Services
2013
- Attended 360|iDev
- Speaker at iOSDevCampDC about AVFoundation
2012
- Switched to the Dvorak Keyboard Layout quickly and began tracking speed.
- Speaker at CocoaConf Raleigh about Automated Acceptance Testing
- Launched CocoaHeads.TV to share CocoaHeads meetup videos from groups around the world.
- Shipped iOS App for the Bad Movie Podcast.
2011
- Speaker at CocoaConf Raleigh about Core Data Concurrency
- Joined Two Toasters as Senior iOS Developer.
- Attended WWDC 2011
2010
- Started CocoaHeads Raleigh after attending NSConference Atlanta. Later renamed to “Triangle Cocoa”.
- Speaker at Autodesk University in Las Vegas about AutoCAD for Mac.
- Attended NSConference Atlanta
2009
- iOS App Icon featured in in-store Christmas display.
2008
- Shipped iAdvent for iPhone.
- Shipped RealPass for iPhone.
- Joined Captive-Aire Systems as a Sr. Software Engineer building an automated drawing web service using RealDWG in C#; front-end web development in ASP.NET; designed and built iPhone, iPad, and Mac apps in Objective-C.
2007
- Registered jnjosh.com
- Started Guest Blogger with my wife, a website meant to connect bloggers with people interested in writing guest posts.
2006
- Started Cinekids TV—a movie review web series—with my kids.
- Directed a short film “How to Be a Girl” and was selected to play at Carrboro Film Festival.
2005
- Directed live TV show “Hardcore Live” on Raleigh Public Access featuring the best of the local music scene.
- Comtrex acquired by Avatach Solutions, continue building custom automation for AutoCAD using C#, VB/VBA, C++/ObjectARX.
2000
- Rejoined Comtrex as a Software Developer building AutoCAD automation (in C++, AutoLISP, J++, and .NET) and web-based sales tools (in PHP).
1999
- Joined McGee Corp as a Junior Programmer building automated drawing applications for AutoCAD.
1998
- Joined Comtrex as an Applications Engineer providing support and building custom AutoCAD applications in AutoLISP, VB, and C++ with ObjectARX.