Third Party API - Technical Lead

Sr Staff Data Engineer - GE07DE

We’re determined to make a difference and are proud to be an insurance company that goes well beyond coverages and policies. Working here means having every opportunity to achieve your goals – and to help others accomplish theirs, too. Join our team as we help shape the future.

The Hartford is seeking an API Technical Lead/Product Owner to lead the strategy, delivery, and evolution of our enterprise Third Party Data API’s. This role is a hands‑on engineering and technical product leadership position as an individual contributor, providing direction, technical leadership, and mentoring for data engineers building Vendor Specific API’s. The individual is accountable to work with Principal Data Engineers (PDEs), Reliability Engineering (RE), Cloud Engineering, Security, and 3rd Party Vendor Teams to enable reliable, scalable, and governed API’s.

This role can have a Hybrid work arrangement. Candidates who live near one of our office locations will be expected to work in an office 3 days a week (Tuesday through Thursday).

A Hands‑On Technical Lead is a senior engineer who actively develops production APIs while also leading technical delivery and owning product decisions for those APIs. This role is both a builder and a leader, not an advisory or oversight‑only position.

• Own and drive the API product vision and roadmap aligned to Enterprise Architecture, Data, and Integration strategies.
• Act as technical product owner and lead for enterprise and 3PD APIs, balancing technical scalability with business outcomes.
• Partner with domain teams and third‑party vendors to design and deliver secure, reusable, and well‑governed APIs.
• Translate business needs into clear technical requirements, user stories, and acceptance criteria, ensuring delivery readiness.
• Provide technical leadership across the API lifecycle, including design reviews, integration patterns, error handling, and performance considerations.
• Guide teams on API standards, best practices, and governance, including versioning, documentation, and lifecycle management.
• Collaborate closely with Security, Architecture, Data Engineering, and SRE teams to ensure APIs meet enterprise risk, compliance, and reliability expectations.
• Monitor and optimize API usage, performance, and adoption, using metrics to inform roadmap and prioritization.
• Support future‑state API and ecosystem capabilities, including event‑driven integrations, data sharing, and partner enablement.

• Partner with Reliability Engineering teams to ensure API’s meet enterprise availability, resiliency, observability and recoverability expectations.
• Support incident response, root‑cause analysis, and continuous improvement related to API failures and data quality issues.

• Define and maintain the 3PD API roadmap aligned with business priorities and enterprise strategy.
• Prioritize features, enhancements, and technical debt based on business value, risk reduction, and scalability needs.
• Own API intake, backlog grooming, and iteration planning.
• Experience with SAFe Agile.

• Own documentation, onboarding materials, standards, and best practices.
• Partner with consumers to resolve delivery, quality, and usability challenges.
• Lead or contribute to API‑focused communities of practice across the enterprise.

• Partner with external providers and internal consumers to support API requirements.
• Coordinate technical onboarding, delivery SLAs, and quality expectations with vendors and partners.
• Collaborate on proofs of concept and evaluations for new technologies, and services.
• Collaborate with Performance Engineering, API COE and DAIO Architecture.

• Provide visibility into usage, throughput, performance, and cost drivers.
• Partner with engineering and vendor teams to implement cost and performance improvements across API implementations.

• Experience Leveraging AI to improve our products and services.
• 8+ years of experience in software engineering, integration, or API development, with at least 3 years in a Technical Product Owner…