Sr. Developer, API

We are seeking an experienced Sr. Developer, APIs to design, build, and maintain the API platform that powers YPO's member ecosystem, Chapter operations, and Agentic AI platform. You will write production-quality code and own the technical implementation of APIs that sit at the core of YPO's digital experience.

You will partner closely with Product, Data Architecture, IT, and Security to deliver scalable, semantic API solutions that meet rigorous technical, privacy, and governance standards. You will also serve as a key technical collaborator for internal engineering teams and integration partners - ensuring that every API surface is performant, well-documented, and safe to consume.

This role requires deep backend engineering expertise, a strong sense of API product quality, and the ability to translate complex integration requirements into robust, maintainable implementations that stand up at scale - within an event-driven, domain-aligned, serverless-first cloud architecture.

Your API Portfolio

You will own the engineering implementation of three core API domains:

Members API
Stable, semantic endpoints exposing member profile, identity, peer discovery, and graph relationships. The foundation of member experience.

Chapters API
APIs powering chapter management, forum operations, event discovery, and role-based data access across YPO's global regional structure.

Agentic Ecosystem APIs
Governed API contracts for AI agents (Peer Discovery, Event Discovery) built on OpenAI + RAG and Google Gemini. Agents consume only approved APIs. Agent reasoning must always be surfaceable.

Primary Responsibilities

1. API Design & Implementation

Design and implement production-grade RESTful and GraphQL APIs deployed via AWS API Gateway that are stable, semantic, and decoupled from vendor-specific backend schemas.

Ensure all APIs conform to YPO's canonical ontology and global member graph. No endpoint may directly expose Salesforce object structures. APIs must map to govern entity definitions maintained in the enterprise data dictionary.

Design APIs to operate within an event-driven architecture leveraging CDC, pub/sub messaging (Kafka and AWS EventBridge), and idempotent patterns.

Apply Domain-Driven Design (DDD) principles - bounded contexts, ubiquitous language, and domain events - to ensure API boundaries reflect business domains, not implementation details.

Adopt a serverless-first approach using AWS Lambda, Step Functions, and EventBridge where appropriate, selecting stateful services only when serverless patterns are genuinely insufficient.

Write clean, well-tested, and well-documented code across the Members, Chapters, and Agentic Ecosystem API domains.

Define and enforce data models, versioning standards, authentication flows (Auth0 / Okta / OAuth 2.0), and integration patterns from first principles.

Apply performance-aware design - intentional pagination, caching strategies, query constraints, and rate-limiting - so APIs scale safely under real-world load.

Every API decision must reinforce member trust through privacy-first architecture, consent enforcement, and transparent data usage.

Ensure every API response includes provenance and explanation metadata, so agent reasoning is always surfaceable to the member.

2. Agentic Ecosystem Engineering

Implement the API governance layer that controls how YPO's AI agents (Peer Discovery, Event Discovery) interact with member data on OpenAI + custom RAG and Google Gemini.

All agent-facing APIs must support structured retrieval, citation-ready provenance fields, consent-aware filtering, and deterministic fallback.

Build and maintain kill-switch-capable API boundaries that prevent agents from ever consuming raw member data outside approved contracts.

Instrument agent API integrations with feedback loop mechanisms - hallucination rates, task success rates, and cost-per-outcome metrics must be observable and attributable to specific API behaviors.

Collaborate with data science and ML teams to translate agentic data flow requirements into governed, tested API contracts.

3. API Lifecycle, Versioning & Governance

Own the full API lifecycle: development, testing, documentation, versioning, deprecation, and migration planning. Every phase requires an explicit decision - no implied continuations.

Establish and maintain engineering standards for API versioning, backward compatibility, and breaking-change policy.

Build and maintain sandbox environments, integration test suites, and automated contract tests for every endpoint in the portfolio.

Work with Engineering leads ensuring reliable CI/CD pipelines, deployment automation, observability via Datadog, alerting, and uptime SLAs. All infrastructure changes must be deployed via Infrastructure as Code (Terraform or AWS CDK) - manual console changes in production are not permitted.

4. Cloud Architecture, IAM & Security

Design and enforce IAM boundary design using least-privilege principles, permission boundaries, and Service Control Policies (SCPs) - ensuring API-layer identities and Lambda execution roles cannot exceed governed data access boundaries.

Operate within and contribute to YPO's multi-account AWS strategy (AWS Organizations, Control Tower) - understanding how workload isolation, environment separation, and cross-account roles affect API deployment patterns and security boundaries.

All cloud infrastructure must be defined and maintained as code using Terraform or AWS CDK - this is a hard requirement, not optional practice

5. Developer Experience & Enablement

Produce and maintain clear API documentation, example queries, and troubleshooting guides so internal teams can self-serve without escalation.

Support technical onboarding for new product teams and integration partners, ensuring APIs are discoverable, stable, and easy to consume.

Identify and address developer friction proactively - issues must never surface only via member complaints or downstream team escalations.

Act as a technical resource for Engineering peers consuming the Members, Chapters, and Agentic APIs.

6. Cross-Functional Collaboration

Work closely with Data Architecture to ensure APIs maintain stable semantic meaning over evolving backend schemas - frontend experience must be decoupled from vendor-specific fields.

Partner with IT and Security to enforce role-based access, chapter-scoped data boundaries, and member consent policy (Auth0 / Okta, OneTrust, GDPR, CCPA).

Collaborate with Product teams and the Sr. Product Manager, Technical to translate requirements and API specifications into production implementations.

Evaluate and integrate third-party technologies (Elasticsearch, Kafka / AWS EventBridge, Search Orchestration Service) that enhance YPO's member ecosystem.

Measure Success

API Reliability : APIs meet defined uptime SLAs; issues detected proactively via Datadog - not reported by members.

Code Quality : New endpoints ship with full test coverage; zero undocumented breaking changes; lifecycle plans in place for every endpoint.

Developer Experience : Internal teams can self-serve from documentation; integration timelines reduced; escalations minimized.

Delivery: Roadmap milestones delivered on time, with acceptance test coverage and passing CI/CD pipelines.

Agent Safety : Zero agentic API calls bypass the governance layer; kill-switch tested and functional for all agent endpoints.

Explainability: Every API response includes provenance and explanation metadata; no result feels like a black box.

Observability: All agent integrations emit hallucination rates, task success, and cost-per-outcome metrics traceable to specific API behaviors.

IaC Compliance : All infrastructure changes deployed via Terraform or CDK; no manual console changes in production.

Skills

Ability to work collaboratively in a multi-cultural organization with international members, helping them achieve excellence in voluntary roles for YPO initiatives.

Excellent interpersonal skills, including strong diplomacy skills with the ability to build meaningful relationships with all levels of associates, members and vendors. Adaptable, insightful, empathetic and reliable. Great sense of humor and humility.

Able to maintain discretion and integrity of confidential information.

Resourceful and able to work independently with initiative and common sense. Effective time management, organization and prioritization skills with the ability to focus on varied projects simultaneously.

Possesses a distinct global mindset, sensitive to local and international customs and protocols.

Demonstrate empathy through active listening and asking the right questions to find the source of an issue.

Able to identify problems, research alternatives, provide solutions and/or resolve issues in a timely manner. Anticipates member/internal client needs and delivers with clarity.

Analytical thinker with ability influence and guide processes with appropriate approach and execution. Natural curiosity and desire to learn more; proficiency and interest in applying new technologies and tools.

Heightened awareness and understanding of YPO as an organization, team and collection of products and services.

Excellent verbal and written communication skills, including proof reading, with a meticulous attention to detail. Adjust communication style appropriately to the audience.

Professional presence, appearance, and stature to interact easily with YPO members, C-level executives and peers at all levels within the organization.

Experience/Background

6–8+ years of professional software engineering experience with a strong backend or API platform focus.

Proven track record designing and implementing RESTful and/or GraphQL APIs for high-volume, data-intensive production workloads.

Strong command of API design principles: contracts, versioning, backward compatibility, authentication/authorization (OAuth 2.0, Auth0, Okta), and integration patterns.

Hands-on experience with AWS API Gateway and REST API development; familiarity with Kong or other API management tooling is a plus.

Solid understanding of event-driven architecture (EDA) patterns - including Change Data Capture (CDC), Kafka, pub/sub messaging, event sourcing, and idempotent consumer design - and hands-on experience building APIs that participate in event-driven systems.

Applied knowledge of Domain-Driven Design (DDD) - bounded contexts, ubiquitous language, aggregates, and domain events - applied to API boundary and contract design.

Experience with serverless-first patterns on AWS (Lambda, Step Functions, EventBridge, API Gateway) - understanding when and why to use serverless vs. container-based architectures.

Hands-on Infrastructure as Code (IaC) experience with Terraform and/or AWS CDK - this is mandatory. Ability to version, review, and deploy all cloud infrastructure changes through code.

Working knowledge of IAM boundary design: least-privilege role design, permission boundaries, SCPs, and how IAM policy scope affects API and serverless security models.

Familiarity with multi-account AWS strategy patterns (AWS Organizations, Control Tower, environment separation) and their implications for API deployment and cross-account access.

Experience with cloud platforms (AWS and/or Azure) and modern CI/CD and DevOps practices.

Demonstrated ability to write performant APIs with intentional constraints - caching, pagination, query optimization, rate-limiting - that scale safely.

Experience designing APIs with explicit contracts, versioning strategies, and automated testing (unit, integration, contract tests).

Familiarity with graph-based data models and their implications for API design.

Experience working within privacy and consent frameworks (GDPR, CCPA) as a first-class engineering constraint, not an afterthought.

Strong communication skills - able to interface effectively with Product, Data, IT, and Security stakeholders and translate requirements into technical solutions.

Active, enthusiastic use of AI-assisted development tools (e.g., GitHub Copilot, Cursor) in daily coding, debugging, testing, and documentation workflows. Candidates who are not currently leveraging AI tools will not be competitive for this role.

Preferred Experience

Prior experience building API layers for agentic AI systems, LLM integrations, or RAG-based products (OpenAI, Google Gemini, or similar).

Experience with API governance for consumer identity or membership platforms where consent and data control are first-class product concerns.

Background in membership organizations, associations, community platforms, or high-trust B2C environments.

Deep hands-on experience with event streaming platforms (Kafka, AWS EventBridge / Kinesis) and designing APIs that produce or consume event streams reliably.

Experience with Elasticsearch or Search Orchestration Services for search-adjacent API design.

Working knowledge of data observability tooling (e.g., Datadog) applied to API performance monitoring, alerting, and SLAs.

Prior exposure to third-party integration orchestration tooling (Zapier, Workato) or iPaaS platforms.

Prior experience collaborating with third-party vendors or implementation partners in designing client-facing API integrations.

Experience designing APIs for agentic AI systems where observability, provenance, and consent filtering are first-class concerns - not retrofitted afterthoughts.

You've designed APIs where performance characteristics were explicit and intentional, not accidental - and you treat APIs and developer tooling as products, not just infrastructure.

Education/Training/Certification

Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Systems, or a related field, or equivalent professional experience.

Advanced technical training or relevant certifications in cloud, API, or software engineering disciplines are preferred.

Physical Requirements

Ability to work flexible and/or extended hours as needed to accommodate members and team members in multiple time zones.

Ability and willingness to travel domestically and internationally approximately 10–15% per year.