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Steven Barash

Experience

Senior Solutions Engineer at Descope

For 6+ years, I’ve worked across identity, developer platforms, and technical GTM. I turn authentication and authorization requirements into architectures, prototypes, and production-ready solutions for startups, global enterprises, and government agencies. I’m particularly interested in developer-first platforms, AI-enabled GTM, and demo engineering and automation.

Career

Sr. Solutions Engineer

January 2025 to Present

New York, NY

  • Lead enterprise CIAM presales across the U.S. East Coast and Europe, partnering with engineering, security, and product teams
  • Build reference implementations, sample applications, and automated demos to validate architectures and accelerate technical evaluations
  • Advise teams on authentication, authorization, federation, and progressive onboarding for B2C and B2B products
  • Bring customer feedback to the product team and help set roadmap priorities
  • Translate ambiguous requirements and unusual integration constraints into identity architectures, POCs, and practical implementation plans

Sr. Solutions Engineer

January 2024 to January 2025

New York, NY

  • Worked across presales and post-sales on identity integrations and customer implementations
  • Worked on a multi-phase identity deployment for a large state agency that became the company’s largest deal closed that fiscal year
  • Built prototypes and custom demos for customer evaluations and brought product feedback to internal teams

Solutions Engineer

March 2023 to January 2024

New York, NY

Associate Solutions Engineer

November 2021 to March 2023

New York, NY

Analyst Solutions Engineer, CIAM Specialist

June 2020 to November 2021

New York, NY

  • Consistently ranked at the top of my segment
  • 2x President's Club (2022 + 2023)
  • Awarded Solutions Engineer of the Year FY23
  • Gave demos entirely in Russian to Russian-speaking developer teams based in Armenia

Earlier experience

Web Developer Intern

September 2018 to May 2020

Pittsburgh, PA

Work at University of Pittsburgh, Swanson School of Engineering
  • Built laboratory and faculty webpages with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript
  • Trained faculty and staff on how to edit their webpages
  • Met with faculty and staff to create specifications for new webpages

Innovative Systems, Inc.

Software Engineering Intern

May 2019 to August 2019

Pittsburgh, PA

Work at Innovative Systems, Inc.
  • Built a dataset profiling tool with a team for an international customer
  • Built simulations of competitors' algorithms from publicly available documentation
  • Ported JavaScript code to TypeScript
  • Built UI components in React

Federated Hermes

Software Developer Intern

May 2018 to August 2018

Pittsburgh, PA

Work at Federated Hermes
  • Built web services with Java, Spring Framework, and Oracle SQL
  • Automated content entry into the CMS using the Selenium framework
  • Documented web service APIs
  • Redesigned and redeveloped the company's internal website at an intern hackathon

University of Pittsburgh

IT Support Assistant

July 2016 to August 2018

Pittsburgh, PA

Work at University of Pittsburgh
  • Installed and configured computer software and hardware
  • Troubleshot hardware and software as needed
  • Entered inventory of computers into a database

Computer Hardware Research Intern

November 2014 to May 2016

Electrical and Computer Engineering Dept.

Work at Carnegie Mellon University
  • Researched Dynamic Random-Access Memory errors within Carnegie Mellon's Electrical and Computer Engineering Dept.
  • Built Java tools to parse and analyze experimental data

Capabilities

Identity

  • Identity & Access Management (IAM)
  • Customer Identity & Access Management (CIAM)
  • Authentication Strategy & Identity Architecture
  • OAuth 2.0
  • OIDC
  • SAML
  • Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA)
  • WebAuthn / Passkeys
  • SCIM
  • Identity Federation
  • B2B Authorization
  • Role-Based Access Control (RBAC)
  • Fine-Grained Authorization (FGA)
  • Identity Migrations

Technical strategy

  • Technical Deal Strategy & Unusual Enterprise Requirements
  • Solutions Architecture
  • Demo Storytelling Linked to Business Value
  • POC Scoping, Success Criteria & Validation
  • Technical Wins
  • SE / AE Technical Enablement
  • Developer-First Platforms & AI-Enabled GTM

Building

  • Demo Engineering, Automation & Repeatability
  • Rapid API / SDK Prototypes & Integrations
  • MCP / Agent Prototypes & Integrations
  • Complex Authentication & Integration Debugging
  • React
  • TypeScript
  • Next.js
  • Node.js
  • Java
  • C#
  • SQL
  • HTML / CSS

Education

University of Pittsburgh, School of Computing and Information

Bachelor's Degree, Information Science

2016 to 2020

Languages

  • English: Native
  • Russian: Full Professional
  • Surzhyk: Professional Working
  • Ukrainian: Limited Working
  • Spanish: Limited Working
  • Korean: Basic

Honors

  • Solutions Engineer of the Year FY23, Okta
  • President's Club 2023, Okta
  • President's Club 2022, Okta
  • First Place Winner, Pitt Challenge Hackathon
  • Second Place Winner, Pitt Blast Furnace Demo Day
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