Senior Engineer - API Management Platform

About this team

The APIM Platform team is part of the Cloud Data & Integration platform team, a world-class delivery group that builds and maintains the underpinnings of lululemon’s technology environment.

The APIM platform team defines the management and operation of Kong, AWS Gateways, offering governance and guidance for teams to navigate API integration within Kong. We empower API developers across various domains to accelerate API development, discover and reuse code, and share best practices.

As a Senior Engineer I, you will bring a high level of technical knowledge as well as strong mentoring abilities. You will be counted on as a leader in your technology space as you contribute to all areas of development and operations (pre‑production to production). You will work closely with a Technology Manager, using your experience and knowledge to guide a team of Engineers through their day‑to‑day process and provide a central escalation point for production concerns.

You will be part of an Agile production release team and may perform on‑call support functions as needed. As a Senior Engineer, you would be the primary caretaker of production platforms and maintain a deep understanding of how delivered products function.

The Sr. Engineer I, APIM Platform, will manage the APIM platform with a specialization in KONG, focusing on optimizing, configuring, and maintaining KONG API Gateway for performance, reliability, and scalability. In addition, the engineer will manage Kubernetes, Redis, AWS infrastructure, Lua scripting for custom KONG plugins, and observability tools like Datadog and Splunk, and build flexible, scalable, resilient, and secure platform products.

As a true teammate at lululemon, you will partner closely with Product managers, Program Managers, and Scrum Masters to develop relationships, manage project scope, and ensure technical deliverables are met.

• Shape and influence the APIM product roadmap and solutions, including APIM standards, capabilities, integrations, platform self‑service features, monitoring, cost management strategies, resiliency, and platform security.
• Collaborate with cross‑functional teams to define API requirements, integrations, and standards.
• Implement and manage API security policies, including OAuth, JWT, rate limiting, IP filtering, and other industry‑standard security protocols.
• Custom Plugin Development:
  Design and implement custom KONG plugins using Lua to meet specific business needs, such as advanced authentication, logging, rate limiting, and custom transformations.
• Monitoring, Logging & Tracing:
  Implement custom logging, monitoring, and distributed tracing capabilities through plugins to capture meaningful metrics, errors, and system health information. Use tracing tools (e.g., Open Telemetry, Jaeger) to provide end‑to‑end visibility of API calls and identify performance bottlenecks.
• Provide documentation, training, and support to internal teams and stakeholders on KONG and API management practices.
• Develop and implement CI/CD via Gitlab.
• Clearly explain business value and considerations to the business groups about APIM platform services, including the required changes for organizations to be successful in their API development initiatives.
• Identify and anticipate new tools and features that can be leveraged to meet the company’s strategic needs successfully.

• Bachelor’s degree or diploma (or equivalent experience) in Computer Science, Software Engineering or Software Architecture; candidates with substantial and relevant industry experience are also eligible.
• 3‑5 years of experience in APIM management tools with a specialization in KONG.
• Deep expertise in managing and optimizing API gateways, specifically KONG, and play a key role in implementing, configuring, and maintaining API management solutions for our organization.
• Performance, reliability, and scalability of KONG API Gateway, while also driving integration with other systems and troubleshooting any issues that arise.
• Experience with Kubernetes, Redis cache and any other AWS infra components needed to support Kong in AWS.
• Experience with Observability tool…