Senior API Data Services Engineer

The Senior API & Data Services Engineer will design, build, and operate high-performance, secure, and scalable data access services within Celera's modernized event-driven data platform. This role focuses on developing API-first data services, caching layers, and access patterns that expose canonical operational data (transactions, positions, accounts, balances) to both operational and analytical consumers. This engineer plays a key role in decoupling data producers from consumers, enabling technology stack simplification while meeting the performance, security, and reliability expectations of a regulated financial services environment.

The role requires strong experience with AWS-native services, distributed systems, and low-latency caching technologies.

The ideal candidate is a senior, hands-on engineer who embraces AI-assisted development practices to improve delivery velocity, code quality, and platform reliability and brings strong experience in API-first platforms, distributed systems, and financial services where performance, security, and auditability are paramount.

• Design and develop API‑first data services using REST and GraphQL
  .
• Deliver secure, high‑performance access to canonical data from TPM/PCB platforms
  .
• Build versioned, contract-driven APIs with full documentation and cataloging.
• Create reusable components to standardize data access across consumers.

• Implement Redis/Elasti Cache
  –based low‑latency caching.
• Tune APIs and caching layers to meet strict SLAs and near‑real‑time needs.
• Balance cache freshness, consistency, and cost in distributed systems.
• Diagnose performance issues across API, cache, and backend layers.
• Use AWS streaming tech (Kinesis, Kafka/MSK) to support real‑time workloads.
• Build and deploy services using API Gateway, Lambda, ECS/EKS, Dynamo
  
  DB, Aurora, S3, Elasti Cache
  .
• Participate in CI/CD, infrastructure‑as‑code, and automated environment pipelines.

• Implement RBAC and entitlement‑aware access.
• Ensure compliance with security, privacy, and regulatory standards.
• Partner with Governance and Architecture to enforce enterprise policies.
• Plan and manage multiple API engineering projects.
• Coordinate across teams to meet financial services and compliance requirements.
• Balance development and operational support demands.
• Work with Data Architecture, Ingestion, Mastering, and Integrated Data teams.
• Onboard application and analytics consumers to platform services.
• Translate business needs into scalable platform capabilities.
• Use Git Hub Copilot and AI tooling to accelerate delivery, standardize code, and improve testing, documentation, and refactoring.
• Promote responsible, effective AI adoption across engineering teams.

• Maintain 24x7 availability, performance, and reliability for APIs and data services.
• Implement robust observability (logging, metrics, tracing).
• Participate in incident response, RCA, and continuous improvement.
• Maintain runbooks and operational documentation; meet all SLAs.

• 5–7+ years in software/data engineering with production APIs and data services.
• Experience operating systems with defined SLAs in regulated environments.
• Hands-on Redis/Elasti Cache and in-memory caching experience.
• CI/CD and modern Dev Ops experience.
• Experience with REST, Graph
  
  QL (including federation/schema management).
• Expertise with Kinesis, Kafka/MSK
  , streaming, and event-driven architectures.
• Understanding of data modeling, canonical data patterns, contracts, and versioning.
• Experience supporting operational consumers and governed APIs for analytics/AI/ML.
• Exposure to data mesh, domain-oriented access, real-time architectures, and migration/modernization.
• Experience with observability, debugging, and production support.
• Ability to diagnose complex reliability and performance issues.
• Deep understanding of financial services data, compliance, and transactional flows.
• Broker‑dealer and wealth management experience preferred.

• Background managing large-scale 24x7 operational data systems.
• Established incident management and escalation processes.
• Experience optimizing ODS performance…