API design is about simplicity and consistency - A quick interview after I won Capital One's "Excellence in API design" award.

Capital One's API Center of Excellence has conducted a quick interview with me after I won the award for individuals who have consistently contributed time and effort into creating great API designs. Here it is.

• Can you tell me about your team and your role on it?

I’m working on the Small Business Online Account Opening team. My title is Software Engineering Manager but I’m also playing a technical leadership role on both teams I’m leading. One team is Team PACMAN and the other team is Team Zelda.

• What is your team working on?

My team is building an online account opening platform for Capital One’s small business customers so they can easily open Saving and Checking accounts for their business via web or mobile device.

• What is the API you won this award for?

NSB OAO Enrollment Service APIs. These APIs help OAO collect customer info and business info and store those data into OAO database. On the backend, we leverage third party vendor checks to help us make business decisions about the application.

• How long have you been designing APIs for?

I’ve been designing RESTful APIs for over 5 years.

• What, in your opinion, is the most important thing to consider when designing an API?

In my opinion, the most important things about API design is simplicity and consistency.

• What does your API do that makes it a compelling API for consumers?

My APIs strictly follow standard of RESTful API design principles, very easy to understand and use for developers.

• How does the Center of Excellence help our API producing teams make better API

The Center of Excellence provides very clear API design guidelines that API producers can always refer to during their API design process. This not only helps answer lot of design questions, but also helps drive all Capital One API producers to deliver consistent API interface. 

• How does it feel to have won this award?

It is a great honor winning this award. It means a lot to me to have my API design skills recognized at enterprise level. This award also inspired me to keep a high standard when coaching other teams on their API design.

• Tell me about your contributions to the DevExchange Review process? I hear you’ve been an exceptionally active participant in the process.

API design is my passion. I love getting involved in the review process with various other teams to learn how they design their APIs and how I can help them to deliver a better API design.

• Why should other people consider getting involved in the process?

I would encourage all API producers at Capital One to stay proactive during the process - there’s lot of interesting discussions going on about API design ideas and I personally learned a lot by very closely engaging with those meetings and sessions.