SDLC & Governance Lead

Role Summary

The SDLC and Governance Lead is responsible for defining and institutionalizing delivery processes, governance frameworks, and policies that ensure safe, scalable, and compliant API product delivery across the enterprise. This role designs the API-as-a-Product lifecycle and integrates it within the customers SDLC process, while assessing support capabilities and leading the change roadmap to uplift operational maturity. The role partners with product, architecture, security, and operations to drive adoption, compliance, and continuous improvement.

Key Responsibilities
Governance & Delivery Frameworks

• Define and maintain delivery processes and governance frameworks for API product development and operations (from ideation to retirement).
• Establish stage gates, RACI, risk controls, and compliance checkpoints embedded in the SDLC.
• Create governance playbooks and templates (e.g., API product charter, design review forms, release checklist).

Policies & Procedures

• Develop and enforce policies and procedures covering API design standards, versioning, documentation, testing, publishing, deprecation, and retirement.
• Align policy with regulatory, security, data privacy, and risk requirements (including auditability).
• Set operational procedures for incident management, change management, and problem management related to APIs.

API-as-a-Product Lifecycle Design & SDLC Adoption

• Design the API-as-a-Product lifecycle (discovery, market fit, design, build, test, publish, operate, measure, evolve).
• Integrate lifecycle controls, deliverables, and metrics into the customers SDLC and DevSecOps toolchain.
• Define standards for developer portals, API catalog governance, documentation, and consumer onboarding.

Capability Assessment & Change Roadmap

• Conduct an assessment of current support capability (people, process, tools) across Dev, QA, Sec, Ops, and Product.
• Define a change roadmap with prioritized initiatives (policy rollout, training, tooling, org design, metrics) to uplift maturity.
• Drive execution of the roadmap with milestones, adoption metrics, and stakeholder communication.

Stakeholder Management & Adoption

• Partner with Architecture, Security, Risk, Compliance, Product Management, Platform Engineering and Business Units to ensure alignment and adoption.
• Lead training, coaching, and enablement programs for teams adopting API-as-a-Product and the new governance processes.
• Facilitate governance forums (Design Reviews, Release Readiness, Change Advisory Boards for APIs).

Metrics & Continuous Improvement

• Establish KPIs and OKRs for API product delivery and operations (e.g., time-to-market, policy compliance rate, defect leakage, change success rate, uptime).
• Implement feedback loops and retrospectives; regularly refine frameworks based on outcomes and audits.

Required Qualifications

• 5–10 years experience in technology delivery, governance, or product management; at least 2–3 years in API lifecycle or platform roles.
• Strong background in SDLC/DevSecOps, governance frameworks, and policy development.
• Exposure to API management platforms (e.g., MuleSoft, Apigee, Kong, WSO2, Azure API Management) and standards (OpenAPI/Swagger, REST, OAuth2/OIDC).
• Experience in financial services/regulated environments with audit/compliance alignment (e.g., security controls, data privacy) is an advantage.
• Proven capability to lead cross-functional change initiatives and drive adoption across multiple teams.

Preferred Skills & Competencies

• Knowledge of ITIL, COBIT, NIST, ISO 27001, secure SDLC practices.
• Familiarity with product management concepts (roadmapping, value metrics, lifecycle economics).
• Strong communication, facilitation, and stakeholder management skills.
• Analytical mindset; able to translate capability assessments into a pragmatic change roadmap.
• Experience with developer portals, API catalogs, and documentation governance.

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