Profile
Senior software engineer and systems builder with 15+ years of experience designing, shipping, and scaling complex production systems in regulated, real-world environments. Deep background in distributed systems, API design, cloud infrastructure, and end-to-end ownership from MVP through scale.
Over the past year, heavily focused on agentic AI systems — designing and deploying multi-turn, tool-orchestrated agents with human-in-the-loop controls, strict compliance constraints, and production reliability requirements.
Comfortable operating in high ambiguity, owning problems end-to-end, and making pragmatic tradeoffs that balance speed, safety, and long-term maintainability.
Core Strengths
- End-to-end system design & ownership (v1 → scale)
- Distributed systems & event-driven architectures
- Long-context reasoning & tool orchestration
- Agentic AI systems with human-in-the-loop
- API & integration-heavy platforms
- Strong systems thinking under real-world constraints
- Mentorship and technical leadership without bureaucracy
Experience
MyComplianceOffice (acquired Fairwords, 2023)
Principal / Staff-Level Engineer — eComms Platform & Agentic Systems
Systems & architecture:
- Designed and evolved distributed eComms platforms handling ingestion, archival, analytics, and compliance workflows across multiple regions.
- Owned architecture and technical decisions across services, data flows, and integrations.
- Built and maintained APIs and pipelines responsible for reliability, performance, and long-term maintainability.
- Worked directly on security audits, compliance reviews, and governance controls — systems function correctly under regulatory constraints.
Agentic AI & automation (recent focus):
- Led the transition from traditional planning and manual delivery workflows to agent-orchestrated systems with human-in-the-loop oversight.
- Designed multi-turn agent pipelines capable of:
- Long-context reasoning over large codebases and documentation
- Tool orchestration across internal systems (task tracking, infrastructure analysis, testing)
- Producing deterministic, reviewable outputs suitable for regulated environments
- Built model-agnostic agent architectures, decoupling system behavior from specific LLM providers.
- Focused on production safety, validation, and observability, not demos — agents are treated as operational systems.
Technical leadership:
- Mentored senior engineers and EMs on system design, tradeoffs, and architectural decision-making.
- Acted as technical multiplier across teams without owning day-to-day people management.
- Frequently embedded with teams to unblock complex architectural or systems problems.
Technologies: Node.js · TypeScript · Angular · GraphQL · MongoDB Atlas · Apache Kafka · Claude Agent SDK · Mastra · AWS · Docker · MySQL · PHP · Laravel
Paya
Tech Lead
- Built and scaled a payment-gateway platform with high reliability and security requirements.
- Owned local dev environments, CI/CD pipelines, and cloud deployment workflows.
- Designed integrations and asynchronous pipelines across multiple systems.
- Balanced hands-on coding with technical leadership and mentoring.
Technologies: Node.js · AWS (Lambda, SQS) · Serverless Framework · React · Ember · Docker
Intengo
Senior Full-Stack Engineer
- Designed and shipped enterprise analytics platforms used for large-scale market research.
- Led architectural migration from monolith/LAMP to MEAN-based microservices.
- Implemented GraphQL APIs, WebSockets, and real-time data streaming.
- Owned systems end-to-end from design through deployment and maintenance.
Technologies: Angular · Node.js · Express · MongoDB · GraphQL · Docker · AWS · Laravel
Imperative Design, Inc.
Founder / Lead Engineer
- Built and shipped multiple products and client systems from scratch.
- Worked directly with customers to translate ambiguous requirements into working software.
- Strong emphasis on ownership, delivery, and pragmatic engineering.
- Currently the home of Optimus — see paul.barrick.dev/optimus.
Technologies: Angular · React · Node.js · Express · MongoDB · GraphQL · Docker · AWS · Laravel · WordPress
Education
North Georgia College & State University
Bachelor of Marketing · Associate Degree in Spanish
Languages
Fluent in Spanish and Romanian.