IBM API Connect Consultant
Plano TX
Overview
Seeking a senior API Platform Architect to lead the migration of enterprise APIs from IBM API Connect to K Gateway (Solo.io). The individual will be responsible for discovery, assessment, migration design, platform engineering, API security governance, and production rollout.
The role requires strong expertise in API Gateway technologies, Kubernetes networking, API security, and enterprise scale modernization programs.
Must Have Skills
API Gateway Platforms
Mandatory
IBM API Connect
API Gateway architecture
API lifecycle management
API security
API governance
REST APIs
Strongly Preferred
Solo.io K Gateway
Gloo Gateway
Kong
Kubernetes
Cloud Native
Must understand:
Kubernetes
Ingress Controllers
Gateway API
Envoy Proxy
Service Mesh concepts
Containerized workloads
The K Gateway platform is built on Kubernetes and Envoy. Knowledge of traditional API management alone will not be sufficient.
API Security
Expert knowledge of:
OAuth2
JWT
OIDC
Mutual TLS
API authorization
Rate limiting
Throttling
WAF integration
DevOps
Experience with:
Git
CI/CD
Terraform
Helm
Kubernetes deployment automation
API promotion pipelines
Modern Integration Skills
Good understanding of:
Kafka
Event driven architectures
Async APIs
Microservices
Experience Requirements
Mandatory
10+ years integration experience
5+ years API Gateway experience
2+ large scale API Gateway migrations
Examples:
IBM API Connect a Kong
IBM API Connect a Apigee
Apigee a APIM
DataPower a API Gateway
Key Responsibilities
Discovery
Assess IBM API Connect configurations
Inventory APIs and dependencies
Analyze policies and routing configurations
Migration Design
Define future state K Gateway architecture
Design migration waves
Create rollback strategies
Re engineering
Reverse engineer existing gateway configurations
Modernize API policies
Simplify legacy implementations where appropriate
This reverse engineering capability is very important.
Production Rollout
Support cutover activities
Troubleshoot production issues
Optimize gateway performance
Nice to Have (Would Differentiate Candidates)
AI / Agent Gateway Experience
If Citizens continues down the path discussed recently, experience with:
MCP (Model Context Protocol)
AI Gateways
LLM Traffic Governance
Agentic Architecture
would be a major differentiator because Citizens is also evaluating a separate Agent Gateway platform