# Alexander Barbazan > Senior Software Engineer | Product Focused Founding Engineer | TypeScript • React • Node.js • AWS | Ex-Investment Banker Location: New York, New York, United States Profile: https://flows.cv/alexanderbarbazan I’m a product-minded Senior Software Engineer and former Investment Banker who blends technical expertise with business intuition—driven to deeply understand user problems, apply first-principles thinking, and deliver solutions that are both effective and impactful. I have a proven track record of excelling in startup environments, characterized by lean teams and rapid development cycles. In every team I join, I bring grit, a strong sense of ownership over my work, and an unrelenting work ethic honed over years in diverse roles. Currently, I’m a founding engineer (engineer #1) at Sparrow, a post-seed fintech startup that has scaled to $3M+ ARR in just under two years. Working directly with the CTO and Product Director in a three-person engineering team, I own the design and implementation of major features for Crest — an automated marketing platform that powers cross-sell and member engagement for 160+ credit unions. Before launching Crest, I led front-end development for a product that enabled financial institutions to create private student loan marketplaces without taking on lender risk. Primary stack: TypeScript, React, Node.js, Express, DynamoDB, AWS OpenSearch. Before engineering, I was an investment banker instrumental in launching a digital infrastructure and technology practice in the U.S., facilitating $2bn of transactions across strategic, financing, and capital raising mandates for our clients. What motivated my career transition? Working with clients, I loved learning how their solutions addressed real-world challenges in areas that resonated with me. I realized I wanted to be part of the transformative power that software has in our lives. With a lifelong learner mentality and a continuous drive for personal growth, I decided to take control of the next chapter of my career and taught myself how to code. My combined expertise in technology and business enables me to take a customer-centric approach to product UX and development. I have a deep understanding of the problems a product is designed to solve and can anticipate the experience end users expect. This allows me to be a strong product partner, aligning technical solutions with delivering real customer value. ## Work Experience ### Senior Software Engineer, Founding Engineer @ Sparrow Jan 2024 – Present | New York, United States • Led end-to-end architecture and development of a physical mail marketing MVP, including a WYSIWYG postcard designer and backend integration with a third-party mail provider for address verification and submission—advocated for an MVP launch to validate product fit with existing partners before deeper investment • Architected an extensible, high-performance table using AG-Grid React — enabling row/column virtualization, custom cell rendering, and optimized navigation — scaling across 70%+ of the app’s key workflows to ensure consistent, fast, and user-friendly data interactions • Leveraged AWS OpenSearch to architect high-performance REST API endpoints in Express, incorporating page-based pagination, text search, and filtering for efficient querying of large tabular data sets • Integrated Unlayer's drag-and-drop email editor, enabling personalized campaign creation for mass and automated sending—saving months of development time and accelerating Sparrow's pivot toward a credit union-focused marketing solution • Implemented an email template gallery using UI virtualization with React-Virtuoso, implementing viewport-based DOM recycling and infinite scroll to efficiently handle large template sets while maintaining smooth scroll performance • Engineered a scalable client-side file processing service handling Excel/CSV imports with 65k+ rows, featuring real-time data validation, error handling, and column mapping while reducing server load through browser-based preprocessing • Collaborate with the CTO and product manager to plan sprints, provide technical scoping during PRD and Figma design reviews, and identify potential issues and remediations to ensure the timely execution of the quarterly product roadmap • Contribute to engineering standards by continuously iterating on development practices, conducting thorough code reviews, and refining QA protocols to ensure consistent and reliable feature releases ### Software Engineer II @ Sparrow Jan 2022 – Jan 2024 | New York, New York, United States Led front-end development for a product that enables financial institutions to launch their own turnkey, student loan marketplace. • Re-architected several React frontend repositories to facilitate the support of new features and rewrote the codebases in TypeScript, to improve code predictability and reduce substantial technical debt inherited from legacy contracted developers • Built a redesigned Marketplace, leveraging the MobX library to handle state management and implemented REST API request handlers to facilitate the integration of new endpoints for data presentation and submission • Utilized the WebSocket protocol to replace HTTP polling to enable real-time feedback from lenders on credit prequalification status and to better manage server resources by eliminating repeated requests • Engineered a React UI library providing reusable form components, hooks, and custom formatting/error-handling utilities to ensure consistent UI design and functionality across products; deployed on Bit Cloud so it can be installed as a dependency • Led the migration of the Sparrow Marketplace and PAAAS (white-labeled solution) products into a monorepo, leveraging similarities in their codebases to streamline the transfer of planned product enhancements between them and simplify codebase maintainability ### Software Engineer @ Olive Jan 2022 – Jan 2022 | New York, United States Olive was a series H startup that provided healthcare automation solutions to hospitals and clinics. ◦ Used a proprietary JavaScript-based framework to develop custom automation workflows that interact with enterprise software used by hospitals for the purpose of eliminating tasks that are manual and repetitive ◦ Implemented TypeScript and object-oriented programming when migrating codebase of legacy workflows to remove repetitive logic and improve readability, as well as refactored code in areas where efficiency could be improved ◦ Conducted unit testing using Jest to validate data sent and returned by the application and ensure successful implementation and integration of new features ◦ Remediated source code vulnerabilities detected by SAST analyzers in GitLab CI/CD to safeguard applications from cross-site scripting attacks ◦ Wrote detailed documentation on the proprietary platform used by Olive engineers to schedule automations, which was available to a department of 350 employees and served as an important onboarding resource ◦ Used Jira to collaborate with other engineers and product managers under the Scrum framework to ensure appropriate progression through work sprints ### Software Engineer @ Mariposa Jan 2021 – Jan 2022 | New York, United States ◦ Co-developed tool that facilitates migrating existing REST APIs to GraphQL by enabling developers to introspect their existing SQL database to automatically render ready-for-use GraphQL schemas and resolvers ◦ Created REST APIs implementing the Express middleware design pattern that interfaced with a user provided SQL database URI, extrapolated the table and column names, and converted them into the GraphQL schema format ◦ Used React Hooks to manage state in function-based React components and implemented the Container pattern to separate data fetching logic from reusable, presentational components ◦ Designed Redux-based registration/login forms, using Redux Toolkit library and thunk middleware to write functions that contain reusable async logic for making HTTP requests with Axios which register and authenticate users ◦ Integrated TypeScript to strengthen code integrity, readability, and compatibility, making use of the language’s strong typing and static type analysis to minimize errors during the development phase ### Investment Banker - Vice President, Technology and Digital Infrastructure @ Nomura Jan 2015 – Jan 2021 | New York, NY ◦ Advised Technology and Digital Infrastructure clients on strategic planning, financing, and capital raising, driving $2B+ in transactions; promoted from Analyst → Associate → Vice President ◦ Instrumental in launching new Telecom & Digital Infrastructure coverage team, focusing on M&A and financing for data centers, fiber networks, and towers ◦ Involved on a ~$1B private capital raise for a greenfield 5G build-out; partnered directly with CTO to distill and position the project’s technology and infrastructure to a diverse investor base ◦ Mentored junior analysts in financial modeling and workflow best practices, improving analytical quality and accelerating team development ## Education ### Bachelor of Arts (B.A.) in Mathematics and Economics (theory track) New York University ## Contact & Social - LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/alexander-barbazan --- Source: https://flows.cv/alexanderbarbazan JSON Resume: https://flows.cv/alexanderbarbazan/resume.json Last updated: 2026-03-23