Senior API Architect / Lead API Engineer

Overview

We are seeking a highly experienced Senior API Architect / Lead API Engineer to drive the design, governance, and lifecycle management of enterprise-scale APIs. This role focuses on defining and enforcing API standards, improving developer experience, and collaborating across product, engineering, and architecture teams to deliver scalable, secure, and high-performance APIs.

The ideal candidate brings deep expertise in REST, gRPC, and event-driven API design, strong documentation practices, and hands-on experience with modern microservices architectures.

Key Responsibilities

API Design & Architecture

• Design RESTful, gRPC, and event-driven APIs using industry best practices and standards
• Create API specifications using OpenAPI/Swagger, AsyncAPI, RAML, and related frameworks
• Define API patterns to support scalability, reliability, performance, and backward compatibility

Documentation & Developer Experience

• Create and maintain clear, comprehensive API documentation and usage guides
• Advocate for excellent developer experience, including:
  • Versioning strategies
  • Error handling standards
  • API discoverability and usability

Governance & Standards

• Define and enforce API design standards, style guides, and governance processes
• Ensure consistency and quality across all APIs within the enterprise
• Support full API lifecycle management, including versioning, deprecation, and backward compatibility

Collaboration & Prototyping

• Partner with Product, Engineering, QA, and Architecture teams to gather requirements and translate them into API designs
• Build API prototypes and mock servers to validate designs and collect early feedback

Quality, Security & Reliability

• Collaborate with QA and development teams to ensure APIs are well-tested, secure, and performant
• Apply API security best practices including OAuth2, JWT, API keys, and access controls
• Promote reliability, observability, and testing standards across API platforms

Continuous Improvement

• Stay current with API trends, tools, and technologies
• Drive continuous improvements in API design, tooling, and governance processes

Required Skills & Qualifications

• Formal training or certification in software engineering with 10+ years of hands-on experience
• Deep understanding of:
  • RESTful APIs
  • gRPC
  • Event-driven architectures
• Strong proficiency with API specification and tooling:
  • OpenAPI / Swagger
  • AsyncAPI
  • RAML
  • Postman
• Experience with API gateways, API management platforms, and developer portals
• Excellent communication, collaboration, and documentation skills
• Strong understanding of API security best practices
• Experience working in Agile / Scrum environments
• Solid background in microservices architectures

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with AWS, including EKS
• Knowledge of Domain-Driven Design (DDD) and microservices-based systems
• Experience with CI/CD pipelines and automated API testing
• Familiarity with Java-based API platforms
• Contributions to open-source API tools, frameworks, or standards

Essential Skills

• API Design & Governance
• REST / gRPC / Event-Driven APIs
• OpenAPI / Swagger / AsyncAPI
• Microservices Architecture
• API Security (OAuth2, JWT)
• AWS & Cloud-native environments
• CI/CD integration for APIs