API Architect / Lead API Engineer

Experience: 10 Years

Job Description

We are seeking a highly experienced Senior API Architect / Lead API Engineer to drive the design, governance, and lifecycle management of enterprisescale 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 highperformance APIs.

The ideal candidate brings deep expertise in REST, gRPC, and eventdriven API design, strong documentation practices, and handson experience with modern microservices architectures.

Key Responsibilities

API Design & Architecture

• Design RESTful, gRPC, and eventdriven 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 welltested, 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 handson experience
• Deep understanding of:
  • RESTful APIs
  • gRPC
  • Eventdriven 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 DomainDriven Design (DDD) and microservicesbased systems
• Experience with CI/CD pipelines and automated API testing
• Familiarity with Javabased API platforms
• Contributions to opensource API tools, frameworks, or standards

Essential Skills

• API Design & Governance
• REST / gRPC / EventDriven APIs
• OpenAPI / Swagger / AsyncAPI
• Microservices Architecture
• API Security (OAuth2, JWT)
• AWS & Cloudnative environments
• CI/CD integration for APIs