Autodesk Sustainability Data API

Read along to learn how Autodesk's Sustainability Data API came to be!

The Sustainability Data API is a standardized framework designed to connect our customers with the right third-party datasets that they trust, want, and are often required to use, at all design stages.

My journey with Autodeskbegan just over 4 years ago when I joined as a software engineering graduate, working primarily on the Fusion product. A few months later, I was presented with an interesting opportunity – to join the Autodesk's Sustainability Solutions team. This was not a development team. This team is responsible for leading the sustainability strategy and innovation, amongst many other things.

Initially, I was tasked with a seemingly trivial question: “Can you help us figure out how we can make sustainability dashboards for our customers more scalable and reusable?” As a trained software engineer, creating reusable components felt second nature to me. However, as I dived deeper, I realized that the real challenge was the non-uniformity of sustainability datasets. At this point my project pivoted primarily to addressing this sustainability data problem at a scale for all Autodesk products and their customers as well as for our Autodesk Platform Services (APS) customers.

By July 2022, I had built the first working prototype, which connected two embodied carbon datasets to design models coming from two sources, #Revit and Data Exchanges. The working prototype showed a lot of promise internally, but it needed more validation with our partners and customers.

Thus, I spent the next few months developing and demoing a more comprehensive proof of concept, enabling embodied carbon calculations and electricity-to-carbon conversions using four different datasets. This showed that the Sustainability Data API could indeed scale to additional data types, beyond just embodied carbon. This version also included a web interface (GUI) to demonstrate a few of the most common use cases. The web interface was also used for validating the concepts with our partners and customers, as well as with other Autodesk stakeholders.

The work on the second prototype was completed in April 2023. At this point the Sustainability Data API had gathered enough traction and interest that we decided it was something we needed to productize. However, being the middle of a fiscal year, it was practically impossible to find a scrum team to take on the ownership. So, we decided that I would continue and develop the first “v1 (beta)” version to be as close to production-ready as possible. By leveraging Autodesk's own state of the art deployment and other productivity tooling, I released (internally) the first working version of the Sustainability Data API on APS in December 2023.

It was then that Isaac Mounce and Kevin Hofacker lent me a hand with their engineering prowess, and together we improved and integrated the “v1 (beta)” version into ACC Takeoff. This feature was made available to our customers as part of the Takeoff beta process in April 2024. This was the first time that the API supported our customer's workflows in a product. The “v1 (beta)” version would later be replaced by “v2” in April 2025. During this time, we also brainstormed and prototyped several other features and concepts that are still informing our current “v3 (beta)” designs.

What followed were several rounds of additional validation, demos, and product pitches, which led to the decision to hire a new engineering team to support this product. This decision was backed by our CEO, Andrew Anagnost, and our Chief Sustainability Officer, Joe Speicher. 💚

I then joined the APS team as the product manager for the Sustainability Data API and by January 2025, we had an amazing engineering team hired, thanks to Mona Jalilzadeh. The team ramped up very quickly and began iterating on the API designs and completely revamped it for “v2”.

In May 2025, we launched a private beta program which was the first time our customers could try the API hands-on. A huge shout-out to our outstanding engineers for achieving this milestone within just 5 months of joining Autodesk: Alessandro Alessio, Stephan van Wyk, Aruorihwo Asagbra, Darragh Enright, and Daniel Carley.

Today, the “v2” is an internal-only release used by several Autodesk products and we're hard at work on the “v3 (beta)” version of the API. For me, the “v3 (beta)” version represents the 5th major design iteration and the one I truly believe will fully deliver on the product vision while being able to address all customer concerns and feedback. This version is now in public beta, and I'd like to invite everyone to try it out!

Ready to start building with the Sustainability Data API? Check out our API Documentation.

Are you a data provider wishing to connect your data to the Sustainability Data API? Learn how to connect your data.

Let's continue driving sustainability forward together! 🌎💪

🌟 Special Thanks: A huge thank you to all our customers and partners who participated in early discovery meetings, APS accelerators, the Sustainability Tech Partner Program events, Autodesk University, and DevCon-s. Your continuous feedback was and continues to be invaluable!

A massive shout-out also to all my colleagues who I didn't get to mention but who have supported and continue to support this journey! I look forward to achieving our future milestones together!

#SustainableFuture #Innovation #CareerMilestone #CareerJourney #Autodesk #APS #OneAutodesk #AutodeskPlatformServices #Sustainability #api #data #autodeskemployee

I am an Autodesk employee. This article is my own and does not represent the views of Autodesk.

Originally published on LinkedIn.