Job SummaryUniversity Federal Credit Union (UFCU) is seeking a Manager, API Platform Engineering to lead a technical team to deliver UFCU's enterprise service layer-a portfolio of APIs, integrations/orchestrations, and enterprise microservices used by internally developed applications, AI initiatives, and approved third-party vendors/partners.
Reporting to the Director of Platform Engineering, this is a hands-on, "player-coach" technical leadership role that blends people management with architecture accountability. You will be responsible for architecture reviews and sign-off, platform governance, delivery execution, and 24/7 operational readiness.
Your team includes:
- API & Integration development on the MuleSoft Anypoint Platform: API development, integration patterns, orchestration, policy enforcement, and runtime operations.
- Enterprise Microservices (Kubernetes/Azure): microservices deployed to Kubernetes (AKS preferred) using Azure cloud services and enterprise engineering standards.
This role supports a hybrid work model with 2-3 days per week on-site at the UFCU Plaza building, and manager a core team of 5-7 FTE's, scaling with contractor resources as needed.
Essential Functions- Lead an engineering team consisting of API/Integration and Microservices resources delivering reliable, secure, reusable enterprise services and APIs.
- Provide hands-on technical leadership including:
- Architecture reviews, technical design guidance, and engineering sign-off for APIs, integrations, and microservices
- Establishing and maintaining reference architectures and engineering standards
- Own the API platform roadmap and governance, including:
- API design standards, documentation (e.g., OpenAPI), versioning, lifecycle management, and deprecation policies
- Consistent patterns for error handling, idempotency, resiliency, and backward compatibility
- Guide MuleSoft Anypoint Platform delivery and operations, including:
- API lifecycle management, policy enforcement, reusable assets, orchestration patterns, and runtime monitoring
- Performance tuning, release readiness, and operational stability
- Lead enterprise microservices engineering using C#/.NET, Kubernetes, and Azure, including:
- Service boundaries and domain alignment, contract-first/service-first approaches
- CI/CD, automated testing strategies, and secure SDLC quality gates
- Observability practices: metrics, logs, distributed tracing, dashboards, and alerts
- Ensure production reliability and operational excellence by:
- Establishing incident response practices, runbooks, post-incident reviews, and problem management
- Defining and tracking SLAs/SLOs, MTTR, reliability trends, and capacity planning
- Embed security and compliance into engineering practices, partnering with Security/Risk/Compliance to ensure:
- Secure API and service patterns (OAuth2/OIDC, mTLS where appropriate, secrets management, encryption at rest/in transit, least privilege)
- Audit readiness (change management, evidence collection, and operational controls)
- Enable internal teams, AI initiatives, and vendors by delivering:
- A clear enterprise service catalog and onboarding documentation
- Supportable integration patterns and certification/testing approaches for vendor consumption
- Manage delivery execution and team operations, including:
- Agile planning (Scrum/Kanban), prioritization, dependency management, and stakeholder communication
- Hiring, coaching, performance management, and contractor augmentation management
Knowledge / Skills / Abilities- Strong leadership capability with a platform mindset-building reusable, well-governed services that enable other teams.
- Deep knowledge of API engineering best practices, including:
- RESTful design, versioning strategies, lifecycle management, security policies, throttling, documentation, and governance
- Hands on experience with C#/.NET.
- Solid understanding of integration and orchestration patterns, including synchronous/asynchronous approaches, retries, dead-letter handling, and resiliency.
- Working expertise in microservices architecture and distributed systems concepts:
- Service boundaries, reliability patterns (timeouts, circuit breakers), data ownership considerations, performance, and scalability
- Demonstrated ability to perform architecture reviews and provide technical sign-off without creating delivery bottlenecks.
- Operational discipline and comfort owning production outcomes, including:
- Incident response leadership, escalation management, postmortems, and continuous improvement
- Practical knowledge of modern engineering practices:
- CI/CD pipelines, automated testing, code quality gates, security scanning, and deployment strategies
- Strong communication and stakeholder management skills:
- Ability to translate technical tradeoffs into business impact and align cross-functional partners
- Preferred domain knowledge:
- Financial services/credit union/banking technology considerations, risk awareness, and compliance mindset
- Familiarity with BIAN concepts for capability/service domain alignment and service taxonomy (preferred)
ExperienceMinimum Requirements- 5+ years leading engineering teams (people management, delivery accountability, coaching/development).
- Experience delivering microservices (Java/C#/.NET) and deploying to Kubernetes
- Proven experience delivering and operating enterprise APIs and/or integration platforms in production environments.
- Experience guiding teams building scalable backend services including CI/CD and operational ownership.
- Demonstrated experience leading architecture reviews and enforcing engineering standards (design patterns, security, reliability).
- Experience integrating with enterprise observability tools (i.e. Grafana, Datadog etc.)
- Ability to work hybrid with 2-3 days/week on-site in the Austin, TX area.
- Willingness and ability to lead incident response when necessary.
Preferred Requirements- Hands-on experience with MuleSoft Anypoint Platform (e.g., API Manager, Exchange, Runtime Manager, monitoring/alerts, policy management).
- Experience with Azure cloud services supporting APIs/microservices (e.g., identity, secrets management, monitoring, messaging/eventing, data services).
- Experience in financial services or another regulated environment with strong security/compliance expectations.
- Knowledge of BIAN framework and/or capability-based service domain modeling.
- Experience scaling delivery with a mix of FTE and contractor resources, including vendor/contract management.
