Eric Barbour

Portland, OR

Eric Barbour

Staff Software Engineer & Engineering Manager

Staff Software Engineer with 8+ years of experience designing and building scalable distributed systems. Deep expertise in event-driven architectures, API design, and data infrastructure. Track record of leading technical initiatives from inception to production in regulated industries, reducing costs, and mentoring engineers.

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About

Building Systems That Scale

I specialize in designing and building scalable distributed systems that solve real business problems. From event-driven architectures and data pipelines to third-party integrations and recommendation engines, I focus on systems that are resilient, observable, and cost-effective.

Currently leading engineering at Fabric Insurance, where I drive technical strategy for a team scaling a direct-to-consumer life insurance platform. I'm passionate about mentoring engineers, establishing reliability practices, and building systems that operate smoothly in regulated industries.

Expertise

  • Distributed Systems
  • Event-Driven Architecture
  • API Design
  • Data Infrastructure
  • Engineering Leadership
  • System Reliability

Career

Experience

Oct 2024 - Present

Fabric Insurance

Startup

Engineering Manager

Leading technical strategy and architecture for a team scaling a direct-to-consumer life insurance platform.

  • Drove technical strategy and architecture decisions for a team of 7 engineers scaling to new markets
  • Owned system reliability and observability initiatives, establishing SLOs and incident response processes that reduced production incidents by 40%
  • Led hiring and onboarding for 3 engineers, defining technical interview loops and mentoring senior engineers toward Staff-level contributions
TypeScriptReactNode.js.NET CoreAWS

Mar 2021 - Oct 2024

Fabric Insurance

Startup

Staff Software Engineer

Architected core systems and data infrastructure for a direct-to-consumer life insurance platform.

  • Designed event-driven architecture using message queues for async policy processing, enabling horizontal scaling and improved system resilience
  • Architected data pipelines and analytics infrastructure for underwriting decisions, regulatory reporting, and business intelligence
  • Led integration of third-party insurance carriers and reinsurance APIs with fault-tolerant patterns maintaining 99.9% availability
  • Reduced infrastructure costs by 20% through query optimization, caching strategies, and right-sizing cloud resources
  • Built personalized recommendation engine that increased offer-to-purchase conversion by 12%
TypeScriptC#.NET CorePostgreSQLAWSDocker

Jun 2020 - Mar 2021

WillowTree Apps

Agency

Senior Software Engineer

Led architecture and development for greenfield full-stack applications from design through production.

  • Led architecture and technical direction for two greenfield full-stack applications from design through production launch
  • Designed REST APIs and data models serving 50,000+ MAU with focus on security, scalability, and developer ergonomics
  • Reduced AWS costs by 25% by profiling bottlenecks, optimizing database queries, and implementing caching layers
TypeScriptReactNode.jsPostgreSQLAWS

Jun 2018 - Jun 2020

WillowTree Apps

Agency

Software Engineer II

Built performant web applications for enterprise clients with a focus on accessibility and modern practices.

  • Built performant React and Vue applications for enterprise clients, championing accessibility and mobile-first patterns
  • Designed CI/CD pipelines with automated testing and preview environments, reducing deployment cycles from days to hours
JavaScriptReactVue.jsNode.jsAWS

Jun 2017 - Jun 2018

WillowTree Apps

Agency

Software Engineer

Developed distributed systems for high-traffic e-commerce applications.

  • Developed distributed e-commerce API in Go for a national grocery chain, designing for high availability and graceful degradation under load
GoJavaScriptDockerAWS

Side Projects

Projects

Contact

Let's Connect

I'm always interested in discussing distributed systems, engineering leadership, or new opportunities. Reach out via email or connect on social.

barbour.ericm@gmail.com