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Skillssdk-engineer

sdk-engineer

Coding & development

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Updated 10-16 04:57

About this skill

SDK Engineer

When to Use

  • Design or implement client SDKs and API client libraries for public or partner APIs
  • Align SDK surface area with OpenAPI, GraphQL schema, protobuf, or RPC contracts
  • Model resources, operations, pagination, streaming, and error types in client code
  • Implement authentication flows (API keys, OAuth2, HMAC/signing, mTLS hooks)
  • Define retries, timeouts, idempotency keys, and resilience defaults for SDK users
  • Plan versioning, deprecation, and multi-language SDK parity (naming, packaging, semver)
  • Author quickstarts, examples, and SDK docs that match the API reference
  • Build contract tests and integration tests against sandboxes or recorded fixtures

When NOT to Use

  • Design the backend API or service only without a client library → api-development, senior-software-engineer, enterprise-integration-api-developer
  • Build end-user application UI or product frontends → senior-frontend-software-engineer, fullstack-software-engineer
  • Stand up internal developer platforms, golden paths, or portals without SDK product work → platform-engineer
  • Write documentation or tutorials without implementing or evolving an SDK → tech-writer-researcher
  • Run pre-flight architecture or build go/no-go reviews without SDK delivery → build-validator

Related skills

Need Skill
Backend REST/GraphQL service implementation api-development, senior-software-engineer
Enterprise integration APIs, AsyncAPI, gateways enterprise-integration-api-developer
Internal platform, IDP, paved-road templates platform-engineer
API reference prose, IA, style guides tech-writer-researcher
Plan/design validation before execution build-validator
OpenAPI lint and API design review api-design-reviewer
CI gates and artifact promotion devops, build-validator

Core Workflows

1. Scope and contract intake

  1. Identify API style (REST, GraphQL, gRPC, JSON-RPC) and source of truth (OpenAPI, proto, schema registry)
  2. List target languages/runtimes and distribution (npm, PyPI, Maven, Go module, crates.io)
  3. Define non-goals (server implementation, CLI-only wrappers, codegen-only with no hand layer)
  4. Capture breaking-change policy and minimum supported API version

See references/sdk_engineer_scope.md.

2. Client modeling and public surface

Map contract operations to idiomatic client types: resources, services, request builders, and enums.

  1. Prefer stable resource-oriented names over raw URL paths in public API
  2. Hide transport details; expose optional raw request escape hatches for power users
  3. Keep configuration (base URL, credentials, timeouts) on a single client instance
  4. Document thread-safety / async model per language

See references/api_contracts_and_client_modeling.md.

3. Auth, resilience, and errors

  1. Implement credential providers and token refresh without surprising global state
  2. Apply default timeouts; retry only idempotent operations with bounded backoff + jitter
  3. Map HTTP/gRPC status and error bodies to a typed error hierarchy with request IDs
  4. Support idempotency keys where the API documents them

See references/auth_retries_and_resilience.md.

4. Pagination, streaming, and large payloads

  1. Implement cursor/page iterators that compose cleanly (for await, generators, paginators)
  2. Support streaming RPC or SSE where the contract requires partial results
  3. Avoid buffering unbounded collections; document memory trade-offs

See references/pagination_streaming_and_resources.md.

5. Versioning and compatibility

  1. Ship SDK semver independent of API version where possible; document mapping
  2. Add deprecation warnings, sunset dates, and migration snippets in release notes
  3. Run compatibility suites against N API versions when feasible

See references/versioning_and_compatibility.md.

6. Testing and documentation

  1. Contract tests: generated or hand-written against OpenAPI/proto examples
  2. Integration tests: sandbox credentials, VCR/fixtures, or ephemeral environments
  3. Align README, quickstart, and reference docs with the official API catalog
  4. Publish runnable examples in CI

See references/sdk_testing_and_documentation.md.

When to load references

Topic Reference
Role boundaries and deliverables references/sdk_engineer_scope.md
OpenAPI/proto → client modeling references/api_contracts_and_client_modeling.md
Auth, retries, timeouts, errors references/auth_retries_and_resilience.md
Pagination, streaming, resources references/pagination_streaming_and_resources.md
Semver, deprecation, multi-language references/versioning_and_compatibility.md
Contract tests, docs, examples references/sdk_testing_and_documentation.md