API Developer

Project Summary

This role will support the development of a public-facing education equity data dashboard, providing secure and reliable access to aggregated school-level metrics through well-documented APIs. The API Developer will build and maintain the data services that power the dashboard, ensuring reliable, scalable access to curated datasets and enabling timely updates and future expansion.

Purpose and objectives

•            Design and implement secure, documented APIs that deliver aggregated dashboard datasets to the Web Developer.

•            Implement consistent business rules described in the data considerations, including enrollment scope, exclusion rules, and suppression for counts

Data domains to support

•            APIs must support all data domains within department’s public reporting database.

Handling known data gaps and inconsistencies

•            Provide a data availability endpoint so the UI can communicate limitations by Local Education Agency (LEA) and metric, aligned to the documented missing data lists.

•            Partner with department staff to ensure all data elements needed are available

API design requirements

•            REST or GraphQL, with preference determined by department standards, with OpenAPI documentation required for all endpoints.

•            Versioning strategy, including backward compatible changes for the Web Developer.

•            Standard query parameters

1.          Domain, metric, year, as of date.

2.          Geography: city, county, state, district, school

3.          LEA type: traditional public, charter, vo tech, as categorized. 

•            Standard response structure

1.          Metadata: dataset name, as of date, refresh cadence, suppression policy, and calculation notes.

2.          Data payload: categories, counts, percents, suppressed indicators, denominator values where applicable.

•            Caching headers and server-side caching for common queries.

Security and governance

•            Public read only access pattern with protection against abuse:

1.          API gateway and rate limiting.

2.          Logging and monitoring.

•            No PII exposure. Only aggregated values with suppression.

•            Align to Department and Data Management Office (DMO) security standards for hosting and operations.

Data pipeline and refresh

•            Define extract and transform processes with DMO, including data validations needed for:

1.          Verified addresses

2.          LEA code mappings for attendance and tardy codes.

•            Refresh cadence

1.          Support snapshot-based refresh where stated in the document that data will not be continuously updated.

2.          Provide clear run logs and publish last refresh timestamps. 

•            Automated tests for calculations and suppression rules.

Deliverables

•            API implementation deployed to the agreed environment.

•            OpenAPI specification and developer portal documentation.

•            Data dictionary and metric definition catalog aligned to UI needs.

•            Data availability and gap reporting endpoints aligned to the documented considerations.

•            Operational runbook for refresh, monitoring, incident response, and onboarding new metrics.

Acceptance criteria

•            API responses match documented business rules and suppression.

•            Performance supports dashboard use with reasonable response times under load.

•            Security controls implemented and validated.

•            Documentation enables the Web Developer to implement the UI without additional reverse engineering.

•            DMO review and sign off on governance, definitions, and operational readiness.

Requirements:

At minimum 7 years’ experience, Microsoft SQL, RESTful

API development: JASON payloads, OpenAPI and Git documentation

Experience with Agile/Scrum Methodologies