Derisk API Rebuild

Shaped Ripple's shift to a microservices payments API, cutting development complexity across engineering teams, and shortening customer technical onboarding by 60%.

Q4 2024

Context

For over a decade, Ripple’s core payments product operated on a monolithic API architecture. As new features and products were added, this architecture created a growing operational strain that affected performance, reliability, and developer onboarding.

As part of a P0 initiative to evaluate a shift toward a microservices-based API architecture, I collaborated closely with Product, Engineering, Technical Writing, and Technical Services to conduct mixed-methods research:

  • A survey of N=65 internal customer-facing engineers

  • In-depth interviews with customer engineers, exploring integration workflows and pain points

Outcome - The research surfaced the table-stakes requirements for a microservices API, clarified internal and customer expectations, identified potential pitfalls, and ultimately validated the strategic push toward a microservices architecture. These insights helped reduce uncertainty around the transition and aligned cross-functional teams on the path forward, see artifacts below.

Before

114

APIs in a monolithic architecture 

 ~8

weeks for technical integration

After

 11

APIs in a microservices architecture 

~3

weeks for technical integration

Tasks & Actions

Phase 1 - Internal Survey

  • Conducted desk research to close knowledge gaps around API terminology and architectural patterns.

  • Partnered with HR to offer internal rewards and increase survey participation from customer-facing engineers.

  • Anticipated customer recruitment challenges by pre-recruiting customer-facing engineers to support outreach for Phase 2 interviews.

  • Used survey insights to shape the scope and focus of the customer interviews.

Phase 2 - Customer Interviews

  • Aligned with customer-facing partner engineers to understand each customer’s integration history, pain points, and desired outcomes; created tailored discussion guides for different customer profiles.

  • Brought stakeholders into the research journey by inviting them to observe sessions and participate in post-interview debriefs.

  • Presented findings to 12 Product Managers and 15 Engineering leaders, highlighting the urgency and strategic importance of transitioning from a monolithic API to a microservices architecture.

Brought together customer and user pain points to reveal the insight that made the developer onboarding experience smoother.

Explain “API polling method” to non-technical audience