I have been mulling over everything I found included in the five API governance job posts I came across the previous week. As I said, there was a lot being asked across those job posts, and the way qualifications, responsibilities, and skills were used was bothering me–they are very jumbled. The other thing that really bothered me was how all of the job postings focused on it being this single persons job to do everything as opposed to them being the definer, facilitator, coordinator, and communicator with other business and engineering stakeholders to do the work. This will be the reason 90% of the API governance efforts fail in the enterprise–it is up to one person to enforce change, and not everyone across the enterprise to step up and contribute to the change.
Here is my current template for anyone looking to post a job opening for someone to lead API governance. It is still too much, and I suggest trimming it down a bit, picking and choosing what really matters to you and your organization. I have tried to keep qualifications, responsibilities, and skills distinct, while also adding a goals section to provide some direction.
Qualifications
- x years demonstrated industry experience
- x years demonstrated business background
- x years demonstrated technical background
- Awareness and passion for latest API technology
- Have a passion for leading and evangelizing
- You are a effective communicator with people
- Have an attention to detail across your work
- Enjoying making sense of complex systems
- Good at simplifying and abstracting complexity
- Have an endless well of enthusiasm for APIs
Responsibilities
- Coordinate with leadership on the creation and evolution of an organizational API governance strategy
- Establish and lead regular discussions amongst cross-functional group of API governance stakeholders
- Take a lead in the conversation with API governance stakeholders about centralization vs federation of APIs
- Define and coordinate the evolution of API policies in alignment with organizational policies
- Define and coordinate the evolution of API design policies and guidance with API governance stakeholders
- Define and coordinate the evolution of API versioning policies and guidance with API governance stakeholders
- Define and coordinate the evolution of API mocking and sandbox policies and guidance with API governance stakeholders
- Define and coordinate the evolution of API development policies and guidance with API governance stakeholders
- Define and coordinate the evolution of API documentation policies and guidance with API governance stakeholders
- Define and coordinate the evolution of API deployment policies and guidance with API governance stakeholders
- Define and coordinate the evolution of API security policies and guidance with API governance stakeholders
- Define and coordinate the evolution of API testing policies and guidance with API governance stakeholders
- Define and coordinate the evolution of API performance policies and guidance with API governance stakeholders
- Define and coordinate the evolution of API consumption policies and guidance with API governance stakeholders
- Define and coordinate the evolution of API retirement policies and guidance with API governance stakeholders
- Define and coordinate the evolution of API legal policies and guidance with API governance stakeholders
- Define and coordinate the evolution of API governance automation Spectral rules aligned with policies
- Conduct API governance reviews of APIs with product and engineering teams who are producing APIs
- Conduct API governance policy audits of APIs with API governance stakeholders to evolve policies and rules
- Educate, collaborate, and regularly communicate API policies with product managers across the enterprise
- Educate, collaborate, and regularly communicate API policies with engineering teams across the enterprise
- Educate, collaborate, and regularly communicate API policies with partners outside the enterprise
- Educate, collaborate, and regularly communicate API policies with vendors outside the enterprise
- Regularly communicate API strategy, policies, and progress with leadership within the enterprise
- Define, regularly refine, and coordinate with teams to reduce friction when onboarding with enterprise APIs
- Define, evolve, coordinate, and guide teams through a commonly agreed upon API lifecycle across teams
- Establish feedback loops with business and technical stakeholders and help drive engagement with APIs
- Maintain an internal API catalog for accessing APIs that are not made available outside the enterprise
- Maintain an public API catalog for access APIs that are made available to partners and 3rd party developers
- Maintain a schema registry for the centralization of schema referenced across APIs and used for validation
- Establish an understanding develop policies for the Internet and industry standards that apply to operations
- Work with compliance stakeholders to ensure APIs are always in compliance with government regulations
- Work with security stakeholders to ensure APIs are always properly secured and compliant with policies
- Work with support teams to ensure that internal and external APIs are properly supported at all times
- Work with teams to monitor activity that occurs across their APIs ensuring they are performing as expected
- Pay attention to the usage across all enterprise APIs, understanding what the patterns and anti-patterns are
- Actively play a role in defining and evolving the metrics that are used to define what matters to API operations
- Help ensure there are accurate analytics, dashboards, and reporting that covers all aspects of API operations
- Lead the creation, evolution, and delivery of educational resources across teams who are producing APIs
- Regularly participate in industry conferences that are relevant to operations and bring knowledge back to share
- Take the lead on evangelizing APIs and API governance with leadership, business, and engineering groups
Skills
- Strong understanding of the HTTP protocol
- Knowledge and interest in Internet standards
- Understanding of REST API design principles
- Strong awareness of JSON and YAMl data formats
- Understanding of Webhook event patterns
- Knowledge of OAuth and JWT authentication
- Proficient working with OpenAPI specification
- Proficient working with JSON Schema specification
- Proficient working with the Spectral rules specification
- Basic understanding of Git source control and workflows
- Exposure to multiple programming languages
Goals
- Help make APIs more discoverable
- Bring more visibility to enterprise APIs
- Increase efficiency across API operations
- Bring more consistency to APIs delivered
- Help standard the API lifecycle for teams
- Drive the regular optimization of API program
- Increase API awareness across teams
- Make APIs a more visible part of business
I spent the last week aligning this with my own API governance as a service strategy, and I will work to regularly update it with my latest thinking. I strongly encourage folks who are hiring for this role to make sure they are properly equipping and supporting the individual they bring on, while also making sure other stakeholders know they are accountable and on the hook for contributing and being the change desired with setting API governance in motion. Another important aspect that I will work on is how do you not just educate leadership about API governance, but actually get them involved in defining and evolving the strategy, and actively contributing to API policies–without this, API governance will never be properly aligned with business goals.
I would also like to do this for API product managers. I will keep an eye out for job postings and do the same work I’ve done here for API governance. I feel the same way as I did when I left Postman–that API governance and API product management are the two most important roles for leading the API changed needed for enterprises over the next decade. Hopefully this job posting template for an API governance lead helps you in your enterprise API journey, and don’t hesitate to reach out if you need help along the way. I am happy to bring in expertise to help you at the strategic and program level as well as at the API contract and tactical level. I won’t be applying for an API governance jobs moving forward, but I am here to be your fractional API governance lead, and provide governance as a services whenever you need. Just let me know how I can help.
