API Technical Lead, VP

Location: Burlington Massachusetts

Time Type: Full time

Job Description

Role Summary

We are looking for an experienced API Technical Lead with more than 10 years of experience to own the design, governance, and delivery of enterprise APIs that power internal platforms, client integrations, and partner ecosystems. This role combines hands‑on technical leadership with architecture, standards, and cross‑team influence to ensure APIs are scalable, secure, and developer‑friendly.

Key Responsibilities

API Architecture & Design

• Own the API strategy and architecture (REST/gRPC/event‑driven as appropriate)
• Define and enforce API standards (naming, versioning, error handling, pagination)
• Design APIs for scalability, performance, and backward compatibility
• Drive API‑first and contract‑driven development (OpenAPI/Swagger, schemas)
• Lead API lifecycle management: design → build → version → deprecate

Engineering Leadership

• Provide hands‑on technical leadership for API development teams
• Review designs and code to ensure quality, consistency, and best practices
• Lead complex API initiatives and cross‑service integrations
• Mentor engineers and raise the overall API engineering bar
• Act as the primary technical escalation point for API‑related issues

Security, Reliability & Governance

• Ensure APIs meet enterprise security standards (authN/authZ, rate limiting, input validation)
• Integrate APIs with OAuth2, OIDC, JWT, mTLS, and centralized auth services
• Define and implement API governance, approvals, and change management
• Ensure observability: logging, metrics, tracing, and SLAs
• Drive resiliency: throttling, circuit breakers, retries, and graceful degradation

Platform & Ecosystem Enablement

• Build and maintain API gateways, developer portals, and shared libraries/SDKs
• Enable self‑service onboarding for internal and external consumers
• Partner with product, security, SRE, and platform teams
• Support internal, client, and partner integrations at scale

Delivery & Operations

• Integrate APIs with CI/CD pipelines and automated testing
• Ensure production readiness, on‑call support, and incident response
• Drive API modernization and legacy integration cleanup
• Track adoption, performance, and reliability metrics

Required Skills & Experience

Technical

• Strong experience designing and delivering enterprise APIs
• Expertise in REST APIs; experience with gRPC and event‑driven APIs a plus
• Proficiency in Java, C#, or similar backend technologies
• Strong experience with API gateways and service mesh concepts
• Deep understanding of distributed systems and microservices

Platform & DevOps

• Experience with Kubernetes, containers, and cloud platforms
• CI/CD automation and Git‑based workflows
• Observability tools (metrics, tracing, logging)
• Familiarity with API testing, mocking, and contract validation

Security & Compliance

• OAuth2, OIDC, JWT, RBAC, secrets management
• Rate limiting, abuse prevention, and data protection
• Audit logging and compliance‑ready API design

Nice to Have

• Experience supporting external client or partner APIs
• Knowledge of financial services or regulated environments
• Exposure to API monetization, throttling tiers, or usage analytics
• Experience driving API platform or integration strategy

Salary Range:

The range quoted above applies to the role in the primary location specified. If the candidate would ultimately work outside of the primary location above, the applicable range could differ.

Employees are eligible to participate in State Street’s comprehensive benefits program, which includes: our retirement savings plan (401K) with company match; insurance coverage including basic life, medical, dental, vision, long-term disability, and other optional additional coverages; paid-time off including vacation, sick leave, short term disability, and family care responsibilities; access to our Employee Assistance Program; incentive compensation including eligibility for annual performance-based awards (excluding certain sales roles subject to sales incentive plans); and, eligibility for certain tax advantaged savings plans.

For a full overview, visit https://hrportal.ehr.com/statestreet/Home.

About State Street

Across the globe, institutional investors rely on us to help them manage risk, respond to challenges, and drive performance and profitability. We keep our clients at the heart of everything we do, and smart, engaged employees are essential to our continued success.

We are committed to fostering an environment where every employee feels valued and empowered to reach their full potential. As an essential partner in our shared success, you’ll benefit from inclusive development opportunities, flexible work-life support, paid volunteer days, and vibrant employee networks that keep you connected to what matters most. Join us in shaping the future.

As an Equal Opportunity Employer, we consider all qualified applicants for all positions without regard to race, creed, color, religion, national origin, ancestry, ethnicity, age, disability, genetic information, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, citizenship, marital status, domestic partnership or civil union status, familial status, military and veteran status, and other characteristics protected by applicable law.

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Job Application Disclosure:

It is unlawful in Massachusetts to require or administer a lie detector test as a condition of employment or continued employment. An employer who violates this law shall be subject to criminal penalties and civil liability.