Senior Lead API Engineer

Career Area:

Technology, Digital and Data

Job Description:

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 Senior Lead API  Engineer 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.

What You Will Do:

As a Lead Software Engineer – API Platform & Product Ownership, you will contribute to the design, governance, and evolution of Caterpillar’s API ecosystem, serving as the single‑threaded owner for assigned API products and domains.

API Product Leadership & Ownership

1. 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
2. Partner with Product Owners, Architects, and Business stakeholders to translate business capabilities into well‑defined, consumer‑centric APIs.
3. Define and enforce API quality standards, including performance, security, documentation, and operational readiness.
4. 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.

Technical Leadership & Engineering Excellence
5. 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
6. Guide teams in designing RESTful, event‑driven, and domain‑aligned APIs, ensuring consistency across the eCommerce platform.
7. Drive adoption of best practices for:
○ OpenAPI specifications and documentation
○ Backward compatibility and versioning strategies
○ Error handling, rate limiting, and resiliency patterns
8. Ensure APIs are observable and operable, collaborating with SRE and platform teams on monitoring, alerting, and incident response.

Delivery, Collaboration & Enablement
9. Work independently on complex, cross‑cutting systems and API components used by multiple applications or teams.
10. Collaborate with consuming teams to ensure APIs meet real‑world usage needs, balancing flexibility with platform stability.
11. Mentor engineers and API consumers on API usage, design intent, and platform standards.
12. Support integrated testing, consumer validation, and release readiness activities to ensure high‑quality API delivery.
13. Participate in on‑call and off‑hours support rotations as needed for critical API products.

The position manages the completion of its own work assignments and coordinates work with multiple teams.
Based on experience and domain knowledge, the incumbent works independently with minimal supervision and is trusted to make product‑level API decisions within established governance frameworks.
 

Typical customers include Caterpillar customers, dealers, external partners, and internal product and engineering teams. The role requires the ability to identify non‑obvious problems, evaluate trade‑offs, and determine the best course of action across technical and business constraints.

What You Will Have:

Decision Making and Critical Thinking: Knowledge of the decision-making process and associated tools and techniques; ability to