API Designer - Expert Level

As an API Designer, you will be responsible for designing, documenting, and evolving robust, scalable, and user-friendly APIs. As a Senior Lead Software Engineer within Commercial and Investment Banking team, you will play a key role in an agile team dedicated to building, enhancing, and delivering trusted, market-leading technology products. You will leverage your deep technical expertise and problem-solving skills to address complex challenges across multiple technologies and applications, driving significant business impact through your contributions.

Key Responsibilities:

• API Design: Design RESTful, GRPC, and/or event-driven APIs using best practices and industry standards (e.g., OpenAPI/Swagger, AsyncAPI).
• Documentation: Create and maintain clear, comprehensive API documentation and usage guides.
• Collaboration: Work with product, engineering, and Architect teams to gather requirements and translate them into API specifications.
• Standards & Governance: Define and enforce API design standards, style guides, and governance processes.
• Prototyping: Build API prototypes and mock servers to validate designs and facilitate early feedback.
• Developer Experience: Advocate for and implement features that improve the developer experience, such as versioning, error handling, and discoverability.
• Lifecycle Management: Support the full API lifecycle, including versioning, deprecation, and backward compatibility.
• Quality Assurance: Collaborate with QA and development teams to ensure APIs are well-tested and meet performance, security, and reliability standards.
• Continuous Improvement: Stay up to date with API trends, tools, and technologies, and drive continuous improvement in API design practices.

Required Skills & Qualifications

• Formal training or certification in software engineering concepts, with 10+ years of applied experience
• Strong understanding of REST, GRPC, and/or event-driven API paradigms
• Proficiency with API specification tools (OpenAPI/Swagger, RAML, AsyncAPI, Postman, etc.)
• Experience with API gateways, management platforms, and developer portals
• Excellent communication and documentation skills
• Familiarity with security best practices (OAuth2, JWT, API keys, etc.)
• Experience working in Agile/Scrum environments.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with AWS (EKS)
• Knowledge of Micro Services & Domain Driven architecture
• Experience with CI/CD pipelines and automated API testing
• Contributions to open-source API tools or standards