Julian Barabas, B.A.

Technical Product Owner + Full-stack Developer
linkedin.com/in/julianbarabas
Julian Barabas

Summary

Julian Barabas is a versatile technology leader, Senior Business Analyst and Full-stack Developer with over 25 years of experience delivering software solutions and leading Agile teams. He currently serves St. Michaels University School as consultant Project Manager, Product Manager, Business Analyst, Full Stack Developer, and Quality Assurance Analyst on SDS3 - the school's new admissions and student-records platform, where he owns product, delivery, and stakeholder engagement across multiple departments, personally builds full-stack features with related automated tests, and manages user acceptance testing of new features and migrated data. This uncommon breadth lets him carry an initiative end-to-end, from a stakeholder conversation through to designed, built, tested, and shipped enterprise software. He combines deep business analysis, project and product management, with hands-on full-stack development and quality assurance, and holds a Graduate Certificate in Project Management along with various technical certifications. Known for his strong communication skills, he effectively bridges the gap between business stakeholders and delivered enterprise technology solutions.

Relevant Skills

  • 25 years developing software solutions for multiple organizations in various senior technical roles.
  • 15 years leading Agile software development teams as a technical project and/or product manager, senior business systems analyst, quality assurance lead, and Scrum product owner.
  • 15 years closely budgeting money to operate and achieve business goals.
  • 15 years Public Sector procurement experience both with and within the BC Public Sector.
  • 15 years of professional programming experience developing web applications using JavaScript, J-Query, AJAX, JSON, XHTML, XML, SOAP, PHP, CSS, ASP.NET, C#, VB.NET, S/HTML, ADO, SQL and T-SQL, VBScript and more.
  • 15 years of professional Network Administration and Server support experience in both Linux and Windows environments. Includes both AWS Cloud management and LAN management.
  • 15 years assisting in manual and automatic testing through the preparation of test scripts and integrated test scenarios, for example with tools like Zephyr and Selenium.
  • 10 years as founder of “Digital Desks Coworking”.

Employment History

Project Manager, Product Manager, Business Analyst, Full Stack Developer & QA Analyst St. Michaels University SchoolSept 2024 – Present (2 years)
  • Analyst-developer for SDS3, the school's in-house web platform replacing Blackbaud and legacy systems, owning the initiative end-to-end across product, project management, business analysis, full-stack development, and quality assurance.
  • Personally designed and built the entire user interface (React, TypeScript, Ant Design), and developed across the full stack including the Java backend and PostgreSQL database.
  • Delivered the complete admissions pipeline, inquiry through to accepted student: family portal, worker dashboard, questionnaires, assessments, configurable fee tables and payments, offer letters, events, notifications, and reporting.
  • Migrated approximately 2,400 historical applications from Blackbaud, with idempotent migrations reconciled and verified against source.
  • Elicited and managed requirements directly from the Admissions team and stakeholders across multiple departments, turning written feedback into tracked, delivered features on tight cycles.
  • Established the automated quality-assurance practice (browser and API regression across all environments) and authored the production go-live / Blackbaud-retirement deployment plan and the performance-and-scale test plan.
Sr. Technical Business Analyst Ministry of Transport and Infrastructure (Information Management Branch)2014-2024 (10 years)
Responsibilities (All projects)
  • Established timelines and action plans for junior project resources, oversaw progress, pinpointed risks, and issues, and delivered updates to project leadership, offering prioritization recommendations.
  • Implemented and upheld standardized work procedures for key project team members to facilitate business process development.
  • Worked core project teams, including members from business units, IT, Testing, Training, and Executives, to ensure project alignment and achieve successful outcomes.
  • Recognized opportunities for process enhancement across multiple teams, led cross-functional workshops, and collaborated with external organizations such as Emergency Management BC to address these improvements.
  • Consulted with stakeholders to evaluate technological solutions for business and organizational challenges, jointly creating roadmaps to enhance efficiency in existing processes.
  • Evaluated and enhanced end-to-end processes for further improvements, ensuring alignment with new frameworks, capacity planning, and performance metrics.
  • Confirmed client requirements and priorities were addressed throughout the software development life cycle, including change management, issue resolution, acceptance testing, implementation, and Product Demos and Sprint Retrospectives.
  • Managed the impact of system changes on business operations, developed and delivered user training, and led client meetings to resolve project issues.
  • Offered ETL advisory services, including the execution of SQL queries.
  • Ensured quality standards by reviewing work, providing support, and coaching Business Analysts and core project team members on best practices and methodologies.
  • Directed quality assurance testing (both manual and automated) for mobile and desktop applications (e.g. PSP, DIT, ONSCENE).
Project Lead Business Systems Analyst Property Services Project 2017 – 2024 (7 years)
  • Provided full business analysis and project administration support for a multi-million-dollar project that successfully deployed a new province-wide property management system that :
  • Records and processes information about all Property interests of the Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure (MoTI) and assets held by the Ministry and BC Transportation Financing Authority (BCTFA).
  • Solely responsible for creating Business Requirements Document (BRD) that included solution abstracts, solution architecture, current and future process diagrams, conceptual data models.
  • Provided end-to-end business process modelling for property acquisition, management, and disposition phases.
  • Responsible for leading Agile Methodology approach to deliver detailed requirement documents, product design materials, and procurement documents.
  • Successfully replaced 7 distinct legacy systems into a new Property Information Management System (PIMS), including data ETL definitions,
Project Lead Business Systems Analyst Heavy Equipment Transport System 2019 – 2020 (<1 year)
  • Provided business analysis duties to a project that was falling behind schedule and needed help.
Project Senior Business Systems Analyst Emergency Management BC – Public Alerting 2017 – 2019 (2 years)
  • Directly responsible for writing business requirement documents, including process redevelopment that adhered to Emergency Program Act, Emergency Program Act, Local Authority Emergency Management Regulation (1995), local jurisdictions legislation.
Project Senior Business Systems Analyst Emergency Management BC – Early Earthquake Warning System 2015 – 2017 (2 years)
  • Lead the establishment of an Early Earthquake Warning and Seismic Monitoring Program that would provide warnings to citizens, automated systems of potentially damaging earthquakes, and provide seismic event data to government agencies and other users in an effort to save lives, improve infrastructure health and standards, and improve emergency response and preparedness throughout B.C.
Project Lead Business Systems Analyst OnScene Project 2016 – 2017 (1 year)
  • Soley responsible as the lead business analyst to provide updated business process recommendations, business requirements and technical specifications.
Project Lead Business Systems Analyst DriveBC Input Tool (DIT) 2014 – 2016 (2 years)
  • Responsible for creating current solution architecture, solution abstract, business process architecture, conceptual data model, business process diagrams, environmental scan with gap analysis, future state solution architecture, future solution abstract, future business process architecture, future conceptual data model, future state business process diagrams, privacy impact statements, detailed business requirements, interviews, and project planning.
Technical Director Red Maple Media Inc.2013-Present (11 years)
  • Provides technical and business leadership to a distributed team of software developers, graphic/web designers, digital/print marketers, and copywriters.
  • Key Technology: LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP, JS, JQUERY, Bootstrap, Drupal, WordPress), with Amazon Web Services (Private Cloud Enterprise Hosting, Route53, RDS Database Servers, EC2 Web Servers, Elastic IPs etc.).
Product Manager KIXEYE Canada Ltd.2013 – 2014 (7 months)
  • Managed and led continuous release DevOps/Agile Product Lifecycle for KIXEYE (160 million USD per year).
  • Defined and promoted the product vision, and overall strategy throughout the team, then operated a gaming portal with an average of 2500 concurrent users.
  • Drove the product roadmap and wireframes from concept through delivery, while monitoring and analyzing product success.
Senior Business Analyst and Project Manager Consultant TP Systems Ltd.2008 – 2014 (5.5 years)
Sub-contract Senior Business Systems Analyst MAXIMUS Canada 2011 – 2014 (3 years)
  • Successfully contributed to two multimillion-dollar projects in design, testing and deployment phases.
  • Led the evaluation of IT applications and systems, business functions, processes, and procedures in order to identify areas for improvement
  • Worked closely with programmers and developers to design and integrate computer-based maintenance and development solutions to meet the business needs of the client and stakeholders, including Operations and Information Technology staff.
  • Within the systems development life cycle domain, served as a liaison between the client, IT operations and external service providers.
Sub-contract Technical Project Manager and Senior Business Analyst Impact BC 2010 (6 months)
  • Hired to save failing project that was late and over-budget.
Business Analyst and Senior Systems Analyst Royal Roads University2003 – 2008 (5 years)
  • Responsible for the analysis, design, development, and support of the University’s corporate applications and Intranet/Portal systems.
  • Confidently analyzed business processes, documented and verified requirements, identified resource commitments, developed communications strategies, and identified risks – all in collaboration with stakeholders.
  • Effectively applied various prototyping, modeling, and other appropriate tools to create functional and operational requirements specifications.
  • Identified, mapped and analyzed data flow and shared data sets to ensure efficient integration with other University systems.
  • Provided maintenance and support for production systems (primary administrator for the Student Information System, Payroll/HR System, and Shipping Information Management System)
  • Developed and manage various intranet portlets.
  • Part of an on-call team responsible for keeping all University applications running outside of regular business hours.
  • For the last two years, promoted to a business analyst on a million-dollar system renewal project. This work included using both business analysis, project management skills, and leading QA testing.
Web Programmer and Network Administrator FunctionFox Systems Inc.2001-2003 (2 years)
  • One of two programmers that participated in all stages of the development of the ‘TimeFox’ application, from concept to release
  • ASP.NET (C#), SQL/T-SQL (MS SQL Server 2005/2008), HTML/CSS, JavaScript, and VBScript
  • Accepted major roles in planning, development, implementation and marketing
  • Responsible for network administration and general technology decisions concerning FunctionFox Systems Inc. and Suburbia Studios.
  • Visit www.functionfox.com to see ‘TimeFox’
Web Programmer Indigenous Governance Program, University of Victoria2000-2001 (1 year)
  • Solely responsible for the design, building and maintenance of UVIC`s first on-line courseware website developed for the Indigenous Governance Program
  • Provided project management, business analysis and programming using Active Server Pages (ASP), CSS, HTML, and MS SQL.
  • Created content by collaborating with various members of the project team and stakeholders (e.g. help files, minimum requirements information and system documentation)
Marketing Assistant Nesbitt Burns1999 (1 year)
  • Provided direct support to Senior Vice-President at BMO Nesbitt Burns
  • Initiated extensive telephone contact with prospective clients
  • Responsible for maintaining a large marketing system, including mail outs, database administration, advertising, and prospect enquiries
  • Successfully completed Canadian Securities Course (Honors)

Education

  • Udemy Enterprise Architect with TOGAF 9.1 Part 12024
  • Udemy Enterprise Architect with TOGAF 9.1 Part 22024
  • Graduate Certificate in Project Management Royal Roads University2005
  • Application and Management of Information Technology (AMIT) University of Victoria2001
  • Canadian Securities Course (Honors)2000
  • B.A. in History University of British Columbia1998
  • A-Levels in Chemistry, Biology, and Geography Harrow School (UK)1993-1998

Testimonials

Julian was instrumental in the success of our modernization project. He has the professional maturity to communicate complex risk profiles to diverse stakeholders and the leadership capacity to manage large IT portfolios. I recommend him without reservation for any senior role in Business Analysis, Project Management, Digital Transformation, or AI adoption.Chetan Sondagar — CIO, St. Michaels University School — March 20, 2026
Julian’s ability to work with stakeholders and present a complex topic in simple terms enabled our requirements gathering sessions to move forward efficiently and effectively. His documentation captured the results clearly and comprehensively, and was used by both the development and test teams going forward. Great work!Melissa AndersonSenior Business Analyst, October 23, 2023, Ministry of Transport and Infrastructure.
Julian has extensive business analysis skills. Julian is able to lead teams of stakeholders through research, analysis and requirements gathering sessions. Julian is a self-starter and is very capable in leading the completion of complex documentation. Julian has the unique skill set of being able to understand technical level requirements, and business level requirements while articulating summary views and presenting them to Executive. Julian is an excellent resource.Melanie Cole-Kellow — Senior Business Analyst — June 29, 2020, Ministry of Transport and Infrastructure.
I had the pleasure of working with Julian for over 2 years on 2 different projects. He was a classic knowledge seeker searching for the missing pieces of information that we needed to complete our project, if he didn't already know the answers. He was always self-motivated, and I trusted him to deliver work of the highest quality on time. I enjoyed working with Julian and I hope to have the opportunity to work with him again in the future.Simeon PasterIndependent IT Consultant and Project ManagerMarch 11, 2013MAXIMUS BC.
Julian was an excellent Systems Analyst and strong contributor to the team's success. Self-motivated and innovative, Julian took on projects with a disciplined approach, reliably delivering what was required when it was required with the added bonus of good customer skills and rapport.- Aneita Strauss PMP, MCPM — Director of Enterprise Systems — October 1, 2012, Royal Roads University.
References upon request.