Principal Engineer Platform API Architect

Job Description

Core Responsibilities

Define the endtoend API strategy (REST/GraphQL/Async), standards, and reference architectures.

Lead API domain modeling and contract-first design (OpenAPI/AsyncAPI/GraphQL SDL).

Own nonfunctional requirementssecurity, performance, reliability, observability, and cost.

Govern API lifecycle: versioning, deprecation, backward compatibility, and documentation.

Partner with product, platform, and app teams to translate business workflows into APIs.

Build API gateways, auth, rate limiting, and monetization.

Review designs/PRs; mentor engineers; run design reviews and ADRs.

Technical skills (musthave)

Protocols & styles: REST best practices, GraphQL (e.g., Apollo Server/Federation), gRPC; eventdriven and async patterns (webhooks, pub/sub, SAGA).

API contracts & tooling: OpenAPI/Swagger, AsyncAPI, Postman

Security: OAuth2/OIDC, JWT, mTLS, secrets management, scopes/claims, finegrained auth (ABAC/RBAC), threat modeling, OWASP API Top 10.

Gateways & mesh: Experience with API gateways (Apigee/Gloo GW), service mesh (Istio/Linkerd), rate limiting, caching, quota, and WAF.

Cloud & runtime: Containers + Kubernetes

DevOps & IaC: CI/CD (e.g., GitHub Actions/Jenkins), Terraform for infra, automated schema validation and contract tests in pipelines.

Observability: Distributed tracing , metrics, logging , SLOs/error budgets.

Data & performance: Caching layers, pagination, idempotency, consistency strategies, schema evolution; performance tuning/load testing.

Integration patterns: Orchestration vs. choreography, retries/backoff, DLQs, eventual consistency patterns for longrunning flows.

Nicetohave

GraphQL expertise with Apollo Server/Federation and schema governance.

Knowledge of Neo4j/graph modeling for complex relationship queries exposed via APIs.

Experience designing provisioning/automation APIs (idempotent operations, workflow status, async jobs).

Familiarity with IBM/RH integration stacks (e.g., IBM RIA) and API gateway policy authoring.

Architecture & design expectations

Produce API domain maps, sequence/flow diagrams, and canonical models.

Define versioning (URI/header), pagination, error standards, and naming conventions.

Establish reference implementations (auth, retry/circuit breaker, correlation IDs).

Choose sync vs. async boundaries; define SAGA/compensation for multiservice workflows.

Create golden paths and reusable templates (service scaffold, CI pipeline, Helm chart).

Security, compliance, and governance

Enforce zerotrust principles; design leastprivilege scopes and token lifecycles.

Data protection: PII handling, encryption in transit/at rest, key rotation.

Compliance awareness, audit trails.

API catalog/portal ownership (e.g., Backstage) and consumer onboarding SLAs.

Delivery & leadership

Run API design reviews; uphold standards via linters and CI gates.

Drive stakeholder alignment (product, security, data, platform).

Mentor engineers; build a community of practice for API design.

Communicate tradeoffs clearly; write ADRs and decision logs.

We are a company committed to creating diverse and inclusive environments where people can bring their full, authentic selves to work every day. We are an equal opportunity/affirmative action employer that believes everyone matters. Qualified candidates will receive consideration for employment regardless of their race, color, ethnicity, religion, sex (including pregnancy), sexual orientation, gender identity and expression, marital status, national origin, ancestry, genetic factors, age, disability, protected veteran status, military or uniformed service member status, or any other status or characteristic protected by applicable laws, regulations, and ordinances. If you need assistance and/or a reasonable accommodation due to a disability during the application or recruiting process, please send a request to ... learn more about how we collect, keep, and process your private information, please review Insight Global's Workforce Privacy Policy:

Skills and Requirements

812+ years in backend/platform engineering; 35+ years in API/platform architecture.

Demonstrated design of highscale, lowlatency APIs in production (traffic, SLOs, cost).

Track record introducing contractfirst development and automated governance.

Strong systems thinking and excellent technical writing/presentation skills. null

We are a company committed to creating diverse and inclusive environments where people can bring their full, authentic selves to work every day. We are an equal employment opportunity/affirmative action employer that believes everyone matters. Qualified candidates will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, ethnicity, religion,sex (including pregnancy), sexual orientation, gender identity and expression, marital status, national origin, ancestry, genetic factors, age, disability, protected veteran status, military oruniformed service member status, or any other status or characteristic protected by applicable laws, regulations, andordinances. If you need assistance and/or a reasonable accommodation due to a disability during the application or the recruiting process, please send a request to ....