API Platform Engineer with AWS - USA Remote

Hello All,

We are hiring below job opening

API Platform Engineer/DevOps

Location: USA Remote

Please find the JD for the API Platform Engineer role attached. Please start sourcing candidates who can join immediately. While this is an IoT-driven environment, we can be flexible on IoT experience for strong candidates with relevant API and platform engineering expertise.

Key Responsibilities

• Analyze the client s IoT-downstream API traffic patterns: identify latency-critical paths (lock/unlock, thermostat commands), throughput requirements, and peak load characteristics
• Optimize Kong gateway routing and caching configuration for IoT-downstream REST APIs to achieve sub-10ms gateway-added latency for real-time device commands
• Design and validate the gateway s handling of IoT-originated REST traffic from AWS IoT Core, including high-throughput scenarios (bulk sensor telemetry, fleet-wide commands)
• Conduct latency benchmarking and load testing for IoT API paths through the gateway in both Dev and Production environments
• Collaborate with the primary API Platform Engineer on pilot validation: ensure the IoT-downstream REST API included in the Dev pilot meets performance success criteria
• Work with the client s IoT engineering team to understand device communication flows from IoT Core through backend services to the gateway, and identify optimization opportunities
• Configure and validate OAuth/Okta-based authentication for IoT backend service APIs routing through the gateway
• Support production migration of IoT-downstream REST APIs with traffic validation and performance baselining
• Provide specialized support for IoT API performance issues, capacity planning for device fleet growth, and incident triage for latency-sensitive endpoints
• Conduct knowledge transfer sessions with the client s engineering team focused on IoT API gateway operations, performance tuning, and scaling patterns
• Contribute IoT-specific sections to operational runbooks covering latency monitoring, alerting thresholds, capacity planning, and troubleshooting guides for device command APIs

Required Qualifications

• 4+ years of experience in API engineering, gateway operations, or backend systems engineering with a focus on IoT or real-time systems
• Strong understanding of IoT architecture patterns: device-to-cloud communication, message brokers (MQTT), cloud IoT platforms, and the REST API layer that exposes device functionality to applications
• Hands-on experience with AWS IoT Core or equivalent cloud IoT platform (Azure IoT Hub, Google IoT Core), including an understanding of how device messages translate to REST API calls via rules engines, Lambda functions, or event bridges
• Experience with API gateway performance optimization: routing tuning, caching strategies, connection pooling, and latency profiling at the P95/P99 level
• Proficiency with load testing tools (k6, Locust, Gatling, JMeter, or equivalent) and performance benchmarking methodology
• Working knowledge of Kong Gateway configuration (routing, plugins, upstream health checks) or willingness to ramp quickly with support from the primary Platform Engineer
• Experience with AWS infrastructure: ECS/EKS, VPC networking, CloudWatch metrics, and X-Ray or equivalent distributed tracing
• Familiarity with OAuth 2.0 authentication flows and token-based API security
• Strong analytical and troubleshooting skills: ability to trace a latency issue from client request through gateway, backend service, and IoT Core
• Clear technical communication: you will present performance findings at milestone gate reviews and author runbook content

Technology Environment

• API Gateway: Kong Enterprise (performance tuning, routing optimization, caching plugins)
• Cloud IoT: AWS IoT Core (rules engine, device shadows, MQTT broker upstream of gateway)
• Cloud: AWS (ECS/EKS, VPC, CloudWatch, X-Ray)
• Identity: Okta (OAuth 2.0 / OIDC for service-to-service auth)
• Load Testing: k6, Locust, Gatling, or equivalent
• Observability: Prometheus, Grafana, Datadog, OpenTelemetry
• Backend: Elixir (the client s primary language; familiarity helpful but not required)
• Protocols: REST/HTTP (primary), MQTT (conceptual understanding of upstream device layer)