Barry Andersen

About Barry Andersen

Writing code is easy, Software engineering is hard\"- one of my favorite quotes and I indeed consider myself an \'Engineer\' after many years of just being a programmer. I prefer DevOps, SOLID and best practice over free styling,\"just get it to work approach\", which inevitably leads to solutions being unstable and taking longer in the long term- Mobile Cross Platform Development- Web Design and Development- Desktop applications- Universal Windows Apps and WPF- Web Services, REST, WCF, WebApi- Project Planning, Architecting and Implementation- Team/Technical Lead- C#.NET, VB, Java, WPF, XAML, Silverlight, Entity Framework, LINQ- KQL, Azure Data Explorer, Azure Data Factory- microservices, Azure functions- Xamarin.Forms, Xamarin Native, MVVMCross, MvvmLight, Caliburn- SOLID Principles, TDD- AGILE, Continuous Integration, DevOps, Jira, HockeyApp, Jira, Atlassian- ASP.NET MVC, Razor, Knockout, Bootstrap, CSS, HTML5, Angular, JavaScript, PHP, Asp- Microsoft Dynamics CRM, SharePoint- Azure Services, Service Bus Messaging, Azure SaaS provisioning- Git, TFS, Bitbucket, SVN- VSTest, NUnit, MOQ, TDD principles- SQL Server, SSRS, SSIS- over 15 Years professional software development experienceMy strengths include fast effective problem solving and being able to discover a new technology and skill up and become productive in it quickly. I enjoy learning new things and avoid becoming stagnant. I am a very quick learner and love a new challenge. I have a very adventurous outlook on life and enjoy many outdoor activities including scuba diving, hiking, mountaineering, fishing and travelling.

Experience

1. Forward Deployed Engineer

   Microsoft

   Nov 2024 — Present · WA, US

   Operate in a fast-paced, high-ambiguity environment, partnering with customers and internal teams to design and deliver scalable, AI-driven solutions in regulated and complex domains. Act as a High Velocity Engineering (HVE) ambassador, leveraging modern AI tooling and agentic workflows to materially increase delivery speed and reduce iteration cost across teams.Key accomplishments and responsibilities:Led architecture and technical scaffolding for an AI-powered compliance and insights platform, enabling non-technical users to query complex compliance and security posture conversationally.Designed extensible, production-ready systems balancing scalability, regulatory constraints, and future unknown complexity; regularly presented and defended architecture with senior and principal stakeholders.Evolved the solution from a single-turn chatbot into a fully multi-turn, agentic system using modern orchestration patterns, tool-based agents (SQL generation/execution, semantic routing), and persistent conversation memory.Identified content safety gaps in sovereign-cloud deployments and implemented a code-based Responsible AI evaluation matrix where direct model access was restricted.Independently delivered a hackathon prototype that significantly exceeded initial requirements; this work became the reference implementation for subsequent releases and influenced broader adoption of agentic frameworks.Currently leading expansion into a production-grade platform incorporating multiple memory stores, vector-based retrieval (RAG), and scalable ingestion pipelines.Partner across teams and orgs to build reusable architectural scaffolding, mentor engineers, and create concrete HVE playbooks, examples, and tool lists to drive higher velocity and independent execution.

Education

• University of Cape Town

  Bachelor of Business Science, Information Systems

  2001 — 2004

Skills

• Wcf Services
• Windows Phone
• Microsoft Sql Server
• Sdlc
• Mvvmcross
• Microsoft Dynamics
• Mvc
• Mvc 2/3
• Windows 8 Application
• Web Development
• Business Analysis
• Business Process
• Asp.net Web Api
• Cross-Platform Development
• .net Framework
• C#
• .net
• Angular Js
• Xaml
• Software Solution Architecture
• Android
• Mvvm
• Web Services
• Agile Methodologies
• Mobile Applications
• Mvc 4
• Android Development
• Enterprise Architecture
• Requirements Analysis
• Monodevelop
• Solid Principles
• Asp.net Mvc
• Silverlight
• Microsoft Crm
• Mvc Architecture
• Windows Azure
• Software Development
• Xamarin
• Software Integrations
• Ios Development