# Spotlight on SIG Architecture: API Governance

DevFeed: [Spotlight on SIG Architecture: API Governance](<https://devfeed.tech/articles/spotlight-on-sig-architecture-api-governance-17595.md>)

Original publisher: [Read original article](<https://www.kubernetes.dev/blog/2026/02/12/sig-architecture-api/>)

Author: The Kubernetes Authors

Published: 2026-02-12T00:00:00Z

Content type: article

Language: en

Sources: [Kubernetes Contributors Blog](<https://devfeed.tech/sources/kubernetes-contributors-blog.md>)

Topics: [API Governance](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/api-governance.md>), [Kubernetes](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/kubernetes.md>), [API](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/api.md>), [Authentication](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/authentication.md>), [Authorization](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/authorization.md>), [OAuth](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/oauth.md>)

Tags: [api-governance](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/api-governance.md>), [apis](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/apis.md>), [auth](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/auth.md>), [authentication](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/authentication.md>), [authorization](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/authorization.md>), [interview](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/interview.md>), [kubernetes](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/kubernetes.md>), [oauth](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/oauth.md>), [spotlight](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/spotlight.md>)

## AI overview

An interview with Jordan Liggitt, lead of Kubernetes SIG Architecture's API Governance sub-project, discusses his work on Kubernetes authentication and authorization and the sub-project's scope. It explains that Kubernetes APIs include REST APIs as well as command-line flags, configuration files, binary execution, backend communication, and data persistence, with goals of stability and continued innovation.

## Source excerpt

This is the fifth interview of a SIG Architecture Spotlight series that covers the different subprojects, and we will be covering SIG Architecture: API Governance . In this SIG Architecture spotlight we talked with Jordan Liggitt , lead of the API Governance sub-project. Introduction FM: Hello Jordan, thank you for your availability. Tell us a bit about yourself, your role and how you got involved in Kubernetes. JL: My name is Jordan Liggitt. I'm a Christian, husband, father of four, software engineer at Google by day, and amateur musician by stealth. I was born in Texas (and still like to claim it as my point of origin), but I've lived in North Carolina for most of my life. I've been working on Kubernetes since 2014. At that time, I was working on authentication and authorization at Red Hat, and my very first pull request to Kubernetes attempted to add an OAuth server to the Kubernetes API server. It never exited work-in-progress status. I ended up going with a different approach that layered on top of the core Kubernetes API server in a different project (spoiler alert: this is foreshadowing), and I closed it without merging six months later. Undeterred by that start, I stayed involved, helped build Kubernetes authentication and authorization capabilities, and got involved in the definition and evolution of the core Kubernetes APIs from early beta APIs, like v1beta3 to v1. I got tagged as an API reviewer in 2016 based on those contributions, and was added as an API approver in 2017. Today, I help lead the API Governance and code organization subprojects for SIG Architecture, and I am a tech lead for SIG Auth. FM: And when did you get specifically involved in the API Governance project? JL: Around 2019. Goals and scope of API Governance FM: How would you describe the main goals and areas of intervention of the subproject? The surface area includes all the various APIs Kubernetes has, and there are APIs that people do not always realize are APIs: command-line flags,