Engineering at Verkada: April Luo, Senior Android Engineer

We’re excited to introduce you to April Luo, a Senior Software Engineer who joined the Command Mobile App team at Verkada four months ago. In this interview, April shares her experience so far, covering a few topics: her role at Verkada, her favorite part about her team and Verkada, the challenges she has been tackling, and her perspective as a woman engineer at Verkada.

April, tell us a little bit about your role and what you do at Verkada.

Hi, I’m April, a Senior Android Engineer at Verkada working on the Command Mobile team. My job is shipping Android features for the Command App that our customers use to manage their security at their locations. This generally includes viewing camera streams, unlocking and locking access control, managing critical alerts in real-time, or any other action they can usually do on web Command. The Command App is especially convenient for our users who are on the go and need to take critical actions to ensure their people's and places' safety.

What do you like about mobile development? What's your favorite part about working on the mobile team at Verkada?

I’m drawn to mobile development because it’s very tactile: rather than my code living in the cloud somewhere, when I build a feature, I can immediately hold it in my hand, and interact with the code that I wrote. On top of that, a mobile app works as its own small technical stack: it has a front end, UI, networking code, and a database among other components, which means that I get to solve a variety of problems. 

One thing I really appreciate about the Verkada Android team in particular, is that they have done a lot of work to adopt modern, standardized best practices. During my onboarding process, I was able to ramp up quickly and immediately make useful contributions. Beyond that, my teammates are very smart, kind, and just lovely humans.

What excites you about working at Verkada?

Besides what I mentioned about my team, another thing that I want to highlight is that Verkada has a vibrant in-office energy. This is something that stood out to me when I was looking for jobs, and I felt it even more when I came onsite for the interview. 

I think remote work has its advantages and works well for some people, but for me, it’s difficult to stay engaged. I didn’t even realize the negative impact that remote work was having on me until I got back to an in-office environment. Now, I’m able to build more solid and trusting relationships with my colleagues, and I’m more deeply connected with what everyone else is working on. For anyone who thrives on face-to-face collaboration, Verkada is a great fit.

Can you tell us about a challenge you recently worked on?

Recently, I’ve been auditing and fixing the deep links that open into our Command Mobile App. For example, when an alert is triggered from camera footage, the user receives an SMS with a link to the clip that triggered the alert. Because these are critical situations, these links should work consistently, at all times, regardless of whether our customers have a web browser on their phone or the Command Android App installed. When the deep link is clicked, it should open Web Command or the Command Mobile app to the relevant camera timestamp, and play the clip.

The challenge was that many of our existing deep links don’t follow a standardized format, and don’t go through the same centralized backend service. So the goal of the project was first to document the current behavior, and subsequently propose a solution to standardize the API and ensure that going forward, we have visibility into whether the links are handled correctly.

Interestingly, there wasn’t a lot of code to write, other than fixing some bugs; it was more about gathering information and finding the right stakeholders. There was a lot of ambiguity, and we needed to make technical decisions with imperfect information. It was a slightly different type of challenge from what I would usually tackle as an engineer, but it was a great opportunity to flex my communication, organization, and project management skills.

Which of the Engineering values do you relate to the most and why?

All of them to an extent, but the one I will call out is “Bias towards action”. In a day-to-day coding scenario, I try to think about the person who will be maintaining this code in 5 years. What questions might they have? And how can I structure my code to help them quickly understand its purpose and diagnose bugs? Of course, there’s always a balance to strike, but it’s an approach I try to keep front and center.

Why do you think an engineer should apply to Verkada?

Although the company has grown significantly in recent years, the engineering team is still relatively small. As a result, there are plenty of opportunities to demonstrate technical impact and responsibility, given the fast-paced environment and lack of red tape. 

While there’s still work to do to build a more diverse and inclusive workforce, every new voice brings unique perspectives and the chance to drive meaningful change. For women engineers looking to lead, innovate, and shape the future of our team, Verkada offers a space to thrive—and I’m excited about the incredible things we can achieve together.