How PayPal Scaled Its API Program feat. Jay Jena, Head of APIs at PayPal

If you have a vision of the API model you’d build if you had almost unlimited funds and 4,000 developers at your disposal, you’re probably very jealous of Jay Jena. 

Jay’s resume includes designing network management services at Cisco, and the private cloud architecture at Toshiba India. Now, he’s Head of APIs at a little company called PayPal.

The key tenet of Jay’s API strategy at PayPal is that the whole system must be scalable. PayPal APIs are all created using a single detailed design guide. As an extra guard rail against human error, every API is run through a linter, which checks for mistakes.

On this episode of API Intersection, Jay explains which factors he takes into account when deciding whether a particular API is worth building, why a softly-softly approach to deprecation is necessary when you’re working with money, and the time-saving power of PayPal’s API linter.

Episode source