Saad Shahbaz Portfolio

Senior Backend Engineer - Opus Lending

• Led backend architecture and development across three large-scale digital lending platforms, designing scalable microservices using Java and Spring Boot.
• Architected and delivered 60+ RESTful APIs supporting complete loan case lifecycle workflows (submission, review, escalation, approvals), reducing manual processing time by 60%.
• Designed and implemented role-based access control (RBAC) and entitlement-driven workflows for banker and non-banker portals, supporting complex status transitions and regulatory constraints.
• Built event-driven microservices using Kafka, processing 100K+ daily API requests, improving system throughput and real-time responsiveness by 40%.
• Designed MongoDB schemas and implemented schema automation, ensuring data consistency and scalability across multiple microservices.
• Wrote 350+ automated test cases (unit and integration), significantly improving system reliability and regression coverage.
• Partnered closely with product managers and business stakeholders to translate regulatory and functional requirements into performant, production-ready backend systems.
• Recognized with Silver Gratitude Award and Outstanding Team Player Award for delivering a full-stack solution within aggressive timelines
• Technology Stack: Java, Springboot, Kafka, Bash, Python, SQL, Openshift

Software Developer - Risk Team

• Built a high-throughput order simulator using Java microservices and Chronicle Queues, reducing production defects by 50% and improving order traceability.
• Designed and deployed Overwatch, a Spring Boot based internal tool enabling real-time order inspection without log parsing, cutting manual triage effort by 80%.
• Architected a Solace-based publisher-subscriber framework to simulate and test millions of trading orders, shortening QA cycles by 30%.
• Led the Production Replay system, capturing live order flows and replaying them in QA using custom Python and Bash automation, resulting in a 60% reduction in recurring production issues.
• Engineered automation scripts in Bash that dynamically generated release branches for a suite of 32 services, streamlining the branching process and promoting parallel development.
• Owned stability and observability for 32 microservices, providing L3 production support and contributing to bi-weekly releases.
• Mentored and onboarded new engineers, reducing ramp-up time and improving overall team productivity.
• Technology Stack: Java, Bash, Python, SQL, TeamCity, uDeploy, BitBucker, Jira, Solace, AutoSys, Ambrosia (Microservice Architecture)

Software Engineer Intern

• Migrated from ADM to ATOM (deployment tool) to deploy add-ons and Composer (an in-house research tool) to employees’ machines, saving a tremendous amount of resources for Citi through the removal of data central dependency.
• Developed a CI/CD pipeline on TeamCity, integrating it with uDeploy that pushes artifacts automatically to ATOM, thus allowing around 2500 users to switch between environments and streams seamlessly.
• Programmed an executable using C#, which deploys the files pushed by ATOM directly to the machines registries and folders, also creating shortcuts for Composer that reduce deployment and update times by 60% and increase version stability by 45% for first time installations.
• Maintained 15 Confluence pages to provide demos for employees of different technical backgrounds.
• Technology Stack: C#, TeamCity, Docker, BitBucket, Jira, React, XML

Data Science Intern

• Led the S&OP (Sales and Operations) project, utilizing Python and machine learning models (such as ARIMA and Facebook Prophet) to accurately predict sales, volume, and quantity for the next 18 months with an accuracy rate of 95%.
• Conducted extensive data cleaning for 10+ projects using Python and Excel, including S&OP, CPQ, email classifications, and churn, to ensure high-quality and accurate results from machine learning models.
• Customized 20+ MS Power BI dashboards, visualizations, and interfaces to deliver meaningful and actionable insights on the S&OP, Email Classifications and several other projects.
• Technology Stack: Python, SQL, Power BI, Jira, Git, Docker, Pandas, NumPy, MS Excel, VBA

Vice President Finance and Sponsorship

• Networked with industry professionals from 5 separate companies, presenting the clubs sponsorship proposal, which resulted in a 100% increase in sponsorship revenue compared to the previous year.
• Lead the recruitment process for the club, interviewing 54 developers and designing the 3-day full stack development boot camp for the 12 newly hired developers.
• Collaborated with 6 developers to develop a mobile app for the MADA community center using Flask and React, which was used to aid food distribution for the elderly community in Montreal.
• Technology Stack: Flask, React

Computer Science Help Desk Tutor

• Tutored approximately 400 students enrolled in introductory courses assisting them to grasp key concepts and debugging their codes with a 100% record of identifying the problems and finding a solution.
• Orchestrated review sessions for the course COMP-206 (Intro to Software Systems) for students to prepare them for the midterms and the final exam, with a total attendance of around 300.
• Technology Stack: Python, Java, Python, C, Bash, MIPs, SQL

Remote Learning Assistant

• Devised and implemented the entire outline of the NUR1-208 course, assisting the course instructor to embed course material by topic to the course website.
• Analyzed and edited over 300 pages of course materials in NUR1-208 to ensure accessibility.
• Technology Stack: R, HTML, CSS