Hire API & integration developers
who build for the retry, not just the happy path.
A dedicated specialist, or a pod, who treats every third-party connection as something that will eventually fail, and designs for that on day one: queued events, idempotent handlers (a retried event applies once), alerts that fire before your customer notices. Vetted on real integrations before they touch yours, working inside your existing team's stack and code review, scaling monthly without a hiring cycle. You interview the specialist who'd actually build the integration before anything is signed.
Interview before signing · First working session inside 14 days · Scale monthly
Tell us about the role
Start Your Enquiry
Send a short brief; an itemised proposal follows within 48 hours.
Hiring an API and integration developer through PixelCrayons gets you a vetted specialist inside your engineering team within 14 days. They connect your CRM, payment, ERP and marketing platforms through defensively-built integrations: webhooks that retry instead of hoping, rate limits respected, every external call logged. They work alongside your existing developers in your repositories and your code review, not around them. You interview the actual person first, scale the engagement monthly, and skip the recruiting cycle a permanent integration hire would take. 21 yrs of integration delivery stand behind the bench.
Judge the record,
not the adjectives.
Outcomes tied to real engagements, not averages.
Rates for brands and companies buying for themselves.
Integration skills,
wired for handover.
Not a script that calls three endpoints and calls it done. An API integration developer whose job is what happens when a receiver goes down, a token expires, or a payload changes shape without warning.
Integration engineering
- REST and GraphQL API design and consumption
- Webhook architecture: event queues, delivery guarantees, dead-letter handling
- OAuth2, API keys and token-refresh flows
- Rate-limit handling with backoff and retry logic
- Idempotent request design: safe replays, no double-charges or double-ships
Platforms connected
- CRM integrations: Salesforce, HubSpot and equivalent platforms
- Payment gateway integrations: reconciliation, not just checkout
- ERP and inventory syncs: stock, orders and fulfilment kept in one truth
- Marketing and lifecycle platform integrations: Klaviyo, Mailchimp and similar
- Shipping and logistics API connections
The delivery layer
- Monitoring and alerting for failed or degraded syncs
- Integration maps and runbooks written for handover, not just for themselves
- Working inside an existing engineering team's stack, conventions and code review
- Sandbox-first builds, with credentials in your vault from day one
- Version control and PR discipline that fits your team's existing workflow
What an integration developer
does once the sync is live.
Most of the job happens after the first successful call, and that is where you should judge them.
The week, beyond the build
New connections are only part of it. A typical week includes reading the failure log from the last few days, working out why one order reached the ERP twice, updating a handler because a vendor added a field to its webhook payload, and rotating a token before it expires over a weekend. They also read the vendor changelogs your team never opens, because a deprecation notice is cheaper to act on now than after the endpoint goes quiet. Good integration work looks boring from the outside. That is the point of it.
Interview signals that matter
Ask them to describe the last integration that failed in production and what they changed afterwards. Strong candidates answer with specifics: the event that arrived out of order, the retry that duplicated a charge, the alert that should have fired sooner. Then give them a scenario: your CRM goes down for an hour and comes back. What happens to the events sent in between? You want queues, idempotency keys and a replay plan in the answer. Ask how they would find out it had happened, too: an alert, not a customer email. Candidates who only talk about the libraries they like are describing the happy path.
Access to sort before they start
Sandbox accounts for every platform involved, not production credentials pasted into a chat. A secrets vault, or at least a shared password-manager folder they can be added to. Admin contacts at each vendor, because some API limits can only be raised by asking. The existing integration code, however messy, plus any scripts someone runs by hand when a sync breaks. Most importantly, decide which system owns each piece of data: if the CRM and the ERP both think they own the customer address, no amount of engineering will stop them overwriting each other.
Where the role ends
An integration developer connects systems; they do not decide how your business processes should work. If sales and finance disagree on when an order counts as closed, settle that first, or the integration will faithfully automate the argument. They are also the wrong hire for a platform you have not chosen yet, because evaluating vendors is a product or operations decision. And if the real need is a single one-off data import, a scoped project costs less than an ongoing engagement. Bring them in when connections need building, watching and maintaining over time.
Brief to embedded,
in two weeks.
Brief & shortlist
You describe the platforms, the stack and the gap; we propose the specialist, or pod, whose actual delivery history fits it. No generic CVs.
Interview them
You meet the real specialist who'd build the sync, not an account manager describing the webhook logic secondhand. Press them on retries, rate limits and failure handling; if the fit isn't right, we propose someone else.
Inside your repos
Repository access granted, existing integrations reviewed, your stand-ups and code review joined. Their first working session on your integration code happens within fourteen days of the NDA, not after a quarter spent onboarding.
Scale either way
Add a second specialist when the integration backlog grows; step down when it doesn't. Integration capacity resizes month to month, so a growing backlog never turns into a headcount decision.
Requests, approvals and the weekly review for this engagement live in your Prism workspace. Each decision is recorded against the outcome it expected. See how Prism runs an engagement →
Meet the actual people before anything is signed
The person,
plus the system.
Hire API developer talent directly and you get their skills. Hire through a delivery organisation and you get their skills inside a structure that keeps working when life happens.
Vetted on real integrations, not puzzles
Every specialist on the bench has built live syncs before yours. Those syncs were built to our own delivery standards before the specialist ever joined a client's stack. That work is reviewed weekly, held to the same handover-documentation bar you'll see. Interview performance shows how someone talks about idempotency; a sync that's survived a real token expiry shows whether they actually built for it.
A second specialist who already knows the syncs
You get a named project manager, an escalation path and a second integration specialist named up front. Briefed on your integrations from day one, reading the integration runbook and failure log as the first one keeps them. Leave or a departure means they step in without a ramp-up: things a lone freelancer can't offer and an in-house hire needs a whole team behind them to get. You get the specialist and the coverage that keeps the syncs running.
Inside your codebase, not a portal
Your repositories, your code review, your stand-ups, your ticketing. Dedicated means writing alongside your existing engineers under your conventions, not integrations delivered as a black box you can't maintain once the engagement ends.
Documentation you can act on
Integration maps, runbooks and credential handover written as the work happens, not reconstructed at offboarding. If the specialist leaves, your team inherits a system it can actually run, not a mystery with a login page.
How you typically hire,
versus through us.
An in-house hire earns its cost once integration work is a permanent, full-time function rather than a recurring backlog, and we'll say so plainly if that's where you are. Most teams need less than that.
| Hiring it yourself | Through PixelCrayons | |
|---|---|---|
| Time to a working specialist | A full recruiting cycle: sourcing, interviews, notice periods, then a learning curve on your integrations | Inside 14 days of a signed NDA, interview included |
| Vetting | A resume and a technical interview; you find out whether the retry logic works once a real webhook fails | Delivery history on real integrations under our own standards, reviewed weekly |
| Management overhead | Yours entirely: recruiting, then auditing every integration for what happens when it fails | A named PM and escalation path included; you direct which platforms connect next, not the admin around it |
| Scaling | A new hiring cycle each direction: months up, severance down | Resize monthly: add a specialist or step down with a conversation |
| Risk when it doesn't work | A mis-hire costs velocity until it's caught, then a difficult exit | Propose-again is built in; leaving takes a handover call with the integration maps, not a negotiation |
A migration that didn't lose a single record.
When a D2C fragrance retailer moved onto a new commerce platform, the catalogue, orders and customer records only survived the move because every connected system was mapped and verified before anything switched. That's the same discipline an integration developer applies to a CRM or payment sync. The full case study sets out the migration's numbers and timeline.
Read the case study →Frequently
asked.
A written proposal with roles, rates and availability arrives within 48 hours of the brief and the shortlist follows within days; you interview the specialist the same week (real integration code they've shipped is available under NDA on request), and the first working session inside your repositories happens within 14 days of a signed NDA. If your existing integrations have undocumented failure modes, and most do, expect the first fortnight to prioritise mapping what's already there before new work begins.
NDA first, then repository and platform-sandbox access. They review your current integrations and write up what they found. Once you agree the first month's priorities, they join your code review and stand-ups from week one, so changes happen inside your process, not parallel to it.
The categories most engineering teams need connected: CRMs, ERPs and accounting platforms, payment gateways, shipping and logistics providers, and marketing or lifecycle tools, through official APIs wherever one exists. If a platform is new to the specialist, they say so, start in its sandbox, and price the discovery honestly rather than pretending familiarity.
A single integration developer covers most stacks on their own. A platform specialist or extra monitoring coverage joins when the backlog genuinely justifies it, and the monthly resize runs both directions. We'd sooner propose one integration developer and add later than sell you a pod before the sync backlog calls for it. The proposal names your backup integration specialist and says whether their cover is part of the monthly rate.
Say so, early. Swapping in a different integration developer is a standard part of the engagement, not a favour you have to negotiate. The replacement inherits the documentation the first specialist kept (integration maps, runbooks, decisions), so a switch costs days, not a restart. And if the conclusion is that you need a different shape of help entirely, a scoped project, not a person, we'll route you there instead.
Interview the person,
not the pitch deck.
Brief us on the platforms and the gap, get a written proposal within 48 hours and a shortlist within days, and meet the actual specialist before anything is signed. If what you really need turns out to be a project rather than a person, we'll say so on the first call.
Proposal in 48 hours · Interview before signing · Scale monthly
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