Lead API Engineer

Overview Key Responsibilities

• Provide technical leadership, mentorship, and guidance to the API engineering team

• Lead the design, implementation, and evolution of API architecture and backend services

• Champion API-first development, ensuring clear contracts and comprehensive documentation (OpenAPI/Swagger)

• Architect and implement secure, scalable, and performant APIs

• Ensure robust authentication, authorization, and data protection for all endpoints

• Drive adoption of best practices in API design, versioning, and integration

• Optimize API performance for low-latency, high-frequency interactions

• Oversee observability, monitoring, and alerting for all APIs and backend services

• Collaborate closely with product, UI, and runtime teams to deliver integrated solutions

• Collaborate with the SDET to ensure comprehensive test coverage and effective test data creation

• Lead the adoption of modern API tools, frameworks, and best practices

• Ensure engineering rigor, code quality, and documentation standards are met

• Facilitate clear communication, knowledge sharing, and effective documentation within the team

• Support team growth through coaching, feedback, and skills development

Core Qualities & Skills

• Proven experience leading API or backend engineering teams and delivering complex API projects

• Deep expertise in API architecture, design, and implementation (RESTful, GraphQL, etc.)

• Strong programming skills in relevant backend languages (e.g., , Python, Java, Go, etc.)

• Experience with API security, authentication, and authorization (OAuth, JWT, RBAC, PKCE)

• Experience with API documentation and standards (OpenAPI/Swagger, Use Case, JSON Schemas, etc.)

• Strong understanding of performance optimization, scalability, and reliability for APIs

• Experience with observability, monitoring, and troubleshooting for backend services

• Strong collaboration and alignment skills across disciplines

• Willingness to learn, share knowledge, and adapt to evolving technologies

• System design skills and awareness of technical debt and tradeoffs
• Excellent communication, documentation, and stakeholder management abilities

• Comfort with ambiguity, discovery, and rapid change

• Commitment to engineering excellence, security, and responsible practices

Preferred Qualifications

• 7+ years of hands-on API or backend engineering experience, with 2+ years in a technical leadership role

• Track record of architecting and delivering scalable, reliable API systems

• Experience with modern development practices (CI/CD, automated testing, code reviews)

• Demonstrated ability to mentor and grow engineers

• Experience working in cross-functional, agile teams

Highly Desirable

• Experience with API gateways (e.g., Envoy, Kong, Apigee) and service mesh patterns (e.g., Istio)

• Experience with event-driven and streaming architectures (pub/sub, callbacks, Kafka, etc.)

• Experience with cloud-native infrastructure and automated provisioning (e.g., Terraform)

• Experience building developer portals and self-service onboarding for APIs

• Ability to perform API Domain Modeling with a strong product orientation, aligning technical design with user and business needs

• Experience thriving in fast-paced, ambiguous environments and balancing rapid delivery with technical excellence

• Experience leading or working with distributed, multidisciplinary teams

Success Metrics

•API response time (median and p95)

• Uptime and reliability of critical services

• Test coverage for API and backend logic

• Developer velocity and time from API design to production

• Time to First Prototype (TTFP)

• Integration lead time for API consumers

• Technical debt reduction and architectural alignment

• Team growth, engagement, and retention

• Stakeholder satisfaction and cross-team collaboration