Lead Software Engineer

Caterpillar•Peoria, IL

8d•$128,470 - $208,770

About The Position

Your Work Shapes the World at Caterpillar Inc. When you join Caterpillar, you're joining a global team who cares not just about the work we do – but also about each other. We are the makers, problem solvers, and future world builders who are creating stronger, more sustainable communities. We don't just talk about progress and innovation here – we make it happen, with our customers, where we work and live. Together, we are building a better world, so we can all enjoy living in it. Your Work Shapes the World at Caterpillar Inc. Cat Digital is the digital and technology arm of Caterpillar Inc., leveraging the latest technologies to build industry leading digital solutions for our customers and dealers. With over 1.5 million connected assets worldwide, our teams use data, technology, advanced analytics, telematics, and AI capabilities to help our customers build a better, more sustainable world. Job Summary: The Lead Software Engineer – API Platform & Product Ownership provides technical and product leadership for Caterpillar’s Parts eCommerce APIs. This role acts as the technical product owner for one or more API domains, owning the technical definition, lifecycle, quality, and evolution of APIs that power customer‑, dealer‑, and partner‑facing digital experiences. While this role maintains strong hands‑on engineering skills, its primary focus is API product strategy, governance, and enablement, ensuring APIs are reliable, scalable, well‑documented, and aligned to business outcomes.

Requirements

Decision Making and Critical Thinking: Knowledge of the decision-making process and associated tools and techniques; ability to accurately analyze situations and reach productive decisions based on informed judgment.
Software Development: Knowledge of software development tools and activities; ability to produce software products or systems in line with product requirements.
Software Development Life Cycle: Knowledge of software development life cycle; ability to use a structured methodology for delivering and managing new or enhanced software products to the marketplace.
Software Integration Engineering: Knowledge of software integration processes and functions; ability to design, develop and maintain interfaces and linkage to alternative platforms and software packages.
Software Product Design/Architecture: Knowledge of software product design; ability to convert market requirements into the software product design.
Software Product Testing: Knowledge of software product testing; ability to design, plan, and execute testing strategies and tactics to ensure software product quality and adherence to stated requirements.
Position requires a four-year degree from an accredited college or university or equivalent working experience
Software development experience or at least five years of experience with master’s degree in computer science or related field.
Experience in designing and developing software applications or at least five years of experience in software application development with master’s degree in computer science or related field.
Demonstrated ability to write, review, and debug production‑quality code.
Message brokers such as Kafka, RabbitMq, AWS SQS, AWS SNS, Apache ActiveMQ, Kinesis, Azure Event Hub.
Datastores such as DynamoDB, Aurora PostgreSQL, MongoDB, Cassandra, Redis, Elasticsearch, MySQL, Oracle.
Application architectural patterns, such as MVC, Microservices, Event-driven, etc.
Deploying software using CI/CD tools such as Jenkins, GoCD, Azure Devops, Confluence, etc.
Experience deploying and maintaining software using public clouds such as AWS or Azure.
Working within an Agile framework (ideally Scrum).
Experience designing well-defined Restful APIs
Experience writing API proxies on platforms such as Apigee Edge, AWS API Gateway or Azure API Manager
Hands one experience with API tools such as Swagger, Postman and Assertible
Test driven development and behavior driven development.
Hands on experience with testing tools such as Cucumber and their integration into CI/CD pipelines.
Experience using mocking frameworks and unit test frameworks
Expertise writing and debugging multi-threaded applications
Strong analytical skills. Must demonstrate solid knowledge of computer science fundamentals like data structures and algorithms and object-oriented design.
Ability to work under pressure and within time constraints.
Passion for technology and an eagerness to contribute to a team-oriented environment
Demonstrated leadership on medium to large-scale projects impacting strategic priorities.

Nice To Haves

Experience designing, governing, or operating AI‑enabled APIs, including APIs that expose, orchestrate, or integrate with large language models (LLMs) or other AI services.
Strong understanding of AI‑driven API interaction patterns.
Familiarity with Model Context Protocol (MCP) or similar approaches for standardizing how AI agents and tools discover, invoke, and exchange context with APIs.
Understanding of agent‑to‑agent (A2A) interaction patterns, including how APIs are designed to safely support autonomous or semi‑autonomous agents operating across systems.
Ability to define and enforce API contracts, rate limits, quotas, and policies appropriate for AI‑driven consumption patterns (e.g., bursty traffic, long‑running requests, token‑based cost controls).
Ability to collaborate with Product, Security, Legal, and Architecture partners to ensure responsible, compliant, and scalable use of AI through APIs.
Demonstrated judgment in balancing innovation with platform stability, particularly when introducing AI capabilities into customer‑ or dealer‑facing API products.

Responsibilities

Act as the technical product owner for Parts eCommerce APIs, owning: ○ API contracts, versioning, and lifecycle management ○ Backlog prioritization and roadmap alignment ○ API product readiness, publishing, and deprecation decisions
Partner with Product Owners, Architects, and Business stakeholders to translate business capabilities into well‑defined, consumer‑centric APIs.
Define and enforce API quality standards, including performance, security, documentation, and operational readiness.
Represent assigned API domains in architecture reviews, API governance forums, and cross‑team design discussions, acting as the authoritative decision‑maker for API design and changes.
Maintain hands‑on engineering capability, contributing code where appropriate, including: ○ API implementations, enhancements, and refactoring ○ API proxies and policies (e.g., Apigee, API Gateway, Azure API Management) ○ Proof‑of‑concepts for new API patterns or integrations
Guide teams in designing RESTful, event‑driven, and domain‑aligned APIs, ensuring consistency across the eCommerce platform.
Drive adoption of best practices for: ○ OpenAPI specifications and documentation ○ Backward compatibility and versioning strategies ○ Error handling, rate limiting, and resiliency patterns
Ensure APIs are observable and operable, collaborating with SRE and platform teams on monitoring, alerting, and incident response.
Work independently on complex, cross‑cutting systems and API components used by multiple applications or teams.
Collaborate with consuming teams to ensure APIs meet real‑world usage needs, balancing flexibility with platform stability.
Mentor engineers and API consumers on API usage, design intent, and platform standards.
Support integrated testing, consumer validation, and release readiness activities to ensure high‑quality API delivery.
Participate in on‑call and off‑hours support rotations as needed for critical API products.