Sr MTS - Architect, Public APIs

About the team and the role:

The mission of the Developer Ecosystem team is to be the platform of choice for global commerce powered by a best-in-class public API portfolio and a world-class developer experience. Our team is all about APIs - the “secret sauce” of modern technology companies. This role is instrumental in building eBay’s external developer platform, which annually drives over $25B in Gross Merchandise Sold and over $3B in Gross Merchandise Bought. We support all of our public APIs while working with external developers, partners, and internal development teams.

Our team sits within the Global Technology organization at eBay and reports directly into the Chief Technology Officer. We build some APIs directly, help other teams as they develop APIs, provide governance / oversight of all public interfaces, create all relevant API documentation, and deliver technical support directly to external developers. We also build many innovative tools, frameworks, and technologies to support the ecosystem.

We are hiring an experienced Sr Member of Technical Staff - Tech Lead / Architect to help architect, design, and implement a variety of API product development efforts across our team. This is a high-impact leadership role that will interface with most organizations within eBay and important external customers via technical discussions, events, conferences, advisory councils, etc. You will personally lead several mission-critical technical efforts, from working with our product management and program management staff on a variety of products, to supporting key company-wide development initiatives and programs.

Simply put, we need you to help our team build and deliver magical developer experiences. We need you to be an innovative thinker with a strong vision for how to support developers through APIs, the ability to coach and mentor engineers, lay out technical requirements, architect and design complex systems, and support product development efforts through the full release life cycle. You’ll be expected to deeply understand our customers’ technical needs, eBay’s business, relevant technologies, platforms, and systems, and build relationships with engineering leaders across a complex global enterprise. Your work will directly impact the technical strategy, functionality, and quality of eBay’s most important APIs.

We are currently in a revitalization and growth phase as we make progress modernizing eBay’s APIs and seek to greatly improve the developer ecosystem holistically. We are hiring exceptional people who align with eBay’s cultural values and are passionate about delivering APIs to fulfill our mission. If you are looking for a challenge, have relevant experience designing and building public-facing APIs and / or API heavy products before, we’d love for you to join us!

What you will accomplish:

• Craft customer-facing APIs and designs that support a wide variety of e-commerce use cases (listings, orders, shipping, etc.)
• Architect and design scalable APIs, related tools, and supporting back-end systems, including business logic, data models, ML models, etc.
• Provide long term technology vision to continually modernize and keep our APIs and systems relevant in constantly changing environments.
• Help define the strategic evolution of our APIs, including the creation of our technical roadmap, supporting frameworks, and service infrastructure.
• Demonstrate a strong systems approach, going beyond immediate needs to proactively address performance, security, and future-proof our solutions.
• Lead complex technical initiatives independently and drive them from concept through successful implementation and release.
• Act as a change agent. Take ownership, collaborate on project scoping, and ensure we deliver coherent solutions within and beyond our team.
• Work closely with peer architects, product & engineering managers, and collaborate with other internal teams to execute our roadmap.
• Develop and champion technical strategies aligned with business objectives, advocate for better solutions, prototype / demo where necessary, and guide others towards the right technical decisions.
• Foster a culture of engineering excellence, best practices, and continuous improvement to drive efficiency, velocity, quality, collaboration, knowledge sharing, and innovation within the team.
• Set a high bar for technical proficiency and uplevel expertise across teams. Lead initiatives to modernize the technology stack when advantageous.
• Play a critical role in hiring, acting as a bar-raiser to elevate team talent. Help mentor and coach engineers at all levels, supporting their professional development and growing the technical capability of the team.
• Produce best-in-class documentation, facilitate design reviews, and maintain architectural wikis to foster self-learning and efficient onboarding.
• Author supporting architecture and design documents to serve as blueprints for a given problem and influence the overall technical solution strategy.
• Design and test experimental APIs with end-user developers to gather feedback about new functionality and iterate our API functionality.
• Backstop our technical support team with knowledge to quickly help resolve the most difficult incidents and bugs that customers encounter.
• Lead the adoption of tools and methods to optimize performance and cost efficiency for critical APIs and supporting systems.

What you will bring:

• 8+ years of experience building complex, large scale distributed systems, APIs, web platforms, backend services, and event handling.
• 4+ years as an architect / technical lead responsible for end to end product scope across multiple domains, as well as design and coding experience.
• Bachelor’s in Computer Science plus 12+ years of experience or MS plus 10+ years of experience.
• Architecture, design, and coding expertise in building production-grade systems using Java, Javascript, and JSON.
• Solid knowledge in GraphQL / REST APIs, OpenAPI specs, Messaging Systems, RDBMS / NoSQL, Containers, Infrastructure layer, etc. Experience in GraphQL, OpenAPI, and Contract-first development preferred.
• Deep experience with Agile / Scrum, exposure to other PDLC methods (waterfall, TDD, extreme, etc), and knowledge of what methods to use and when.
• Excellent understanding of computer science fundamentals, data structures, algorithms, Object-Oriented Programming, and Software Design.
• Experience leading complex technical initiatives across teams independently, from inception to successful delivery.
• Able to forge alignment with senior stakeholders on technical direction for ambiguous problem areas.
• Experience creating and driving technical strategy and roadmaps across multiple domains while balancing trade-offs to support long-term goals.
• Proven ability to resolve complex architectural challenges in production systems. Drive discussions, write design docs, and participate in design and code reviews.
• Proven track record of leading and participating in effort estimation for complex projects, ensuring timelines and resources align with business objectives.
• Passion and commitment for technical excellence. Able to present and attend knowledge sharing sessions, both within the company and externally.
• Excellent decision-making skills and an ability to develop and drive adoption of technical practices that improve team velocity and deliver high-quality code.
• Executive-level communication and collaboration skills for influencing technical direction; able to speak to technical and non-technical partners at all levels.
• Strong sense of ownership, open to embracing differences, diverse ideas, and disagreement across organizations to create alignment and get things done.
• Growth mindset and openness to learning adjacent areas (project management, product management) to better support the organization.
• Deeply care about growing others, great at mentoring and coaching, creating a large positive impact on organizational culture.