What are the responsibilities and job description for the IBM API Connect Consultant position at Shaarpro?
Role: IBM API Connect Consultant
Location: Plano TX-Onsite
Overview
Seeking a senior API Platform Architect to lead the migration of enterprise APIs from IBM API Connect to K Gateway (Solo.io). The individual will be responsible for discovery, assessment, migration design, platform engineering, API security governance, and production rollout.
The role requires strong expertise in API Gateway technologies, Kubernetes networking, API security, and enterprise scale modernization programs.
Must Have Skills
API Gateway Platforms
Mandatory
- IBM API Connect
- API Gateway architecture
- API lifecycle management
- API security
- API governance
- REST APIs
Strongly Preferred
- Solo.io K Gateway
- Gloo Gateway
- Kong
Kubernetes & Cloud Native
Must understand:
- Kubernetes
- Ingress Controllers
- Gateway API
- Envoy Proxy
- Service Mesh concepts
- Containerized workloads
The K Gateway platform is built on Kubernetes and Envoy. Knowledge of traditional API management alone will not be sufficient.
API Security
Expert knowledge of:
- OAuth2
- JWT
- OIDC
- Mutual TLS
- API authorization
- Rate limiting
- Throttling
- WAF integration
DevOps
Experience with:
- Git
- CI/CD
- Terraform
- Helm
- Kubernetes deployment automation
- API promotion pipelines
Modern Integration Skills
Good understanding of:
- Kafka
- Event driven architectures
- Async APIs
- Microservices
Experience Requirements
Mandatory
- 10 years integration experience
- 5 years API Gateway experience
- 2 large scale API Gateway migrations
Examples:
- IBM API Connect â¿¿ Kong
- IBM API Connect â¿¿ Apigee
- Apigee â¿¿ APIM
- DataPower â¿¿ API Gateway
Key Responsibilities
Discovery
- Assess IBM API Connect configurations
- Inventory APIs and dependencies
- Analyze policies and routing configurations
Migration Design
- Define future state K Gateway architecture
- Design migration waves
- Create rollback strategies
Re engineering
- Reverse engineer existing gateway configurations
- Modernize API policies
- Simplify legacy implementations where appropriate
This reverse engineering capability is very important.
Production Rollout
- Support cutover activities
- Troubleshoot production issues
- Optimize gateway performance
Nice to Have (Would Differentiate Candidates)
AI / Agent Gateway Experience
If Citizens continues down the path discussed recently, experience with:
- MCP (Model Context Protocol)
- AI Gateways
- LLM Traffic Governance
- Agentic Architecture