API Platform Manager

Safe-Guard Products International LLC•Atlanta, GA

17h•Hybrid

About The Position

We are seeking a growth-minded Manager, API Platform to lead our API engineering team in building and operating a mission-critical platform that powers millions of transactions every day. The right candidate has operated under pressure in high-stakes environments where platform reliability and throughput are directly tied to company revenue. You will set the technical direction, grow your team, and be personally accountable for the health and evolution of our API stack.

Requirements

8+ years of professional software engineering experience, with at least 3 years in an engineering leadership role
Demonstrated experience owning a high-volume, business-critical API platform — ideally one processing large volume of transactions per day where availability directly impacts revenue
Deep working knowledge of Java and Spring Boot; ability to guide architectural decisions and review code credibly
Familiarity with generative AI and LLM integration and a forward-looking instinct for where AI fits in an API platform
RESTful API design, microservices architecture, and API lifecycle governance at scale
Proficiency with API design patterns — GraphQL, gRPC, and/or OpenAPI/Swagger — with strong opinions on when to use each
AWS cloud-native development — hands-on with ECS Fargate, API Gateway, Lambda, SQS, S3, and related services
Relational and NoSQL databases
Distributed systems fundamentals — resilience patterns, fault tolerance, eventual consistency, and performance tuning under high-concurrency load
Track record of performance optimization and scalability work — load testing, capacity planning, and incident response in production environments
Exceptional communication skills — able to translate complex technical concepts for executives, business partners, and engineers alike, and to listen as well as they speak
Proven record of building and developing engineering teams — hiring well, retaining top talent, and creating a psychologically safe environment that encourages bold ideas
Experience leading teams in Agile/Scrum environments with a bias toward delivery, learning, and continuous iteration
Experience managing through a high-severity platform incident (outage, degradation, or security event) at scale
Background in fintech, payments, e-commerce, or any domain where API uptime is tied directly to transaction revenue
Event-driven architecture experience (Kafka, SNS/SQS, EventBridge) in a high-throughput production context
Hands-on experience with observability tooling (Datadog, Splunk, or similar) and a philosophy of building platforms that are easy to monitor and debug

Responsibilities

Own the API platform roadmap — partner with product, architecture, and business stakeholders to translate company objectives into a scalable, high-throughput technical strategy
Ensure platform reliability and performance at scale — oversee an API stack operating at scale, where downtime or degradation has direct bottom-line impact.
Drive technical excellence in architecture, design, and delivery — guide decisions on microservices, API design, cloud-native patterns, and data strategies that support mission-critical throughput on AWS
Champion a high-pressure, high-ownership engineering culture — establish SLOs/SLAs, observability practices, and incident response standards that reflect the criticality of the platform
Grow and develop your team — invest in people through coaching, clear expectations, stretch assignments, and a feedback culture that rewards growth and continuous improvement
Stay close to the technology — remain hands-on enough to assess technical risk, evaluate architectural tradeoffs, and earn credibility with your engineers through genuine technical depth
Lead with humility and curiosity — actively solicit ideas from your team, challenge assumptions (including your own), and foster a culture where innovation is everyone's responsibility
Collaborate with offshore teams — partner effectively with distributed engineering teams across time zones, ensuring alignment on priorities, clear communication of technical standards, and seamless integration of offshore contributions into the platform roadmap