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Key Responsibilities and Required Skills for API Integration Specialist

💰 $ - $

EngineeringAPIsIntegrationITSaaS

🎯 Role Definition

An API Integration Specialist is responsible for designing, developing, securing, testing, and operating reliable integrations between internal systems and external SaaS platforms using modern API and middleware technologies. This role requires strong experience with RESTful APIs, event-driven messaging, data transformation, API lifecycle management, and API security (OAuth2/JWT), while collaborating with product, engineering, and business stakeholders to deliver scalable, maintainable integrations and automation that support business objectives.

📈 Career Progression

Typical Career Path

Entry Point From:

  • Junior Software Developer with API/webhook experience
  • Systems/Integration Analyst with experience in middleware or ETL
  • DevOps or Site Reliability Engineer with integration responsibilities

Advancement To:

  • Senior API Integration Engineer / Lead Integration Engineer
  • Integration Architect / Solution Architect (API-first architecture)
  • API Product Manager or Technical Program Manager (Platform APIs)

Lateral Moves:

  • DevOps / SRE focused on platform stability and CI/CD
  • Cloud Integration Engineer (iPaaS specialist e.g., MuleSoft, Boomi)
  • Data Engineer focused on ETL pipelines and streaming integrations

Core Responsibilities

Primary Functions

  • Design, build, and maintain RESTful and GraphQL APIs, endpoints, and microservices that enable secure, scalable data exchange between internal systems and third‑party services such as Salesforce, NetSuite, Workday, and major SaaS platforms.
  • Author and maintain OpenAPI (Swagger) specifications, API contracts, and machine‑readable documentation to ensure consistent integration patterns and automated client generation.
  • Implement authentication and authorization for APIs using OAuth 2.0, JWT, API keys, and mutual TLS; ensure integration compliance with SSO and enterprise identity providers (SAML, OIDC).
  • Lead integration pattern selection and implement middleware solutions (ESB/iPaaS/messaging) for synchronous and asynchronous use cases to meet latency, throughput, and reliability requirements.
  • Develop robust data transformation and mapping pipelines (JSON ↔ XML ↔ CSV) including field normalization, enrichment, validation, and schema evolution handling between heterogeneous systems.
  • Build and operate event‑driven integrations using message brokers (Kafka, RabbitMQ, AWS SNS/SQS) and design idempotent, resilient consumers/producers for high availability.
  • Create, execute and automate integration unit, contract, and end‑to‑end tests using Postman, Newman, pytest, or similar frameworks to maintain high quality and reduce production incidents.
  • Configure and operate API gateway and management platforms (Apigee, Kong, AWS API Gateway) to enforce rate limiting, quotas, caching, logging, and policy-based security.
  • Implement observability for integrations: structured logging, distributed tracing (OpenTelemetry), metrics (Prometheus/Grafana), and alerting to proactively detect and troubleshoot issues.
  • Build CI/CD pipelines for integration code and infrastructure changes using Git, Jenkins, GitHub Actions, or GitLab CI to enable rapid, safe deployments and rollback capabilities.
  • Manage API versioning, deprecation schedules, and backward compatibility strategies to minimize consumer disruption while evolving platform capabilities.
  • Conduct performance tuning, load testing, and capacity planning for APIs and integration backplanes to ensure SLAs are met under peak loads.
  • Troubleshoot production incidents, perform root cause analysis, and implement corrective actions and permanent fixes while participating in on‑call rotations.
  • Collaborate with product managers and business analysts to gather integration requirements, translate business needs into technical designs, and prioritize integration backlogs within agile ceremonies.
  • Evaluate and select third‑party integration platforms, SDKs, and libraries; run proofs‑of‑concept (POCs) and create cost/benefit analyses for recommended solutions.
  • Secure integration pipelines and data in transit and at rest, applying encryption best practices and ensuring compliance with GDPR, SOC2, PCI, or other regulatory requirements relevant to integrations.
  • Provide technical governance and standards for API design, naming conventions, error handling, and SLA definitions to promote consistency across teams and services.
  • Create SDKs, client libraries, or sample integrations for internal and external consumers to accelerate adoption and reduce integration friction.
  • Maintain detailed technical documentation, runbooks, and diagrams (sequence, data flow, and architecture) for all integrations to enable knowledge sharing and efficient onboarding.
  • Mentor and review the work of junior engineers and integration specialists, driving best practices and ensuring high code quality through design and code reviews.
  • Collaborate with security, legal, and procurement teams when integrating with external vendors to ensure contractual, security, and data protection requirements are satisfied.
  • Implement webhook receivers and outbound webhooks with retry/backoff strategies and idempotency to reliably handle asynchronous notifications from partners.

Secondary Functions

  • Support ad-hoc data requests and exploratory data analysis.
  • Contribute to the organization's data strategy and roadmap.
  • Collaborate with business units to translate data needs into engineering requirements.
  • Participate in sprint planning and agile ceremonies within the data engineering team.
  • Maintain and improve the API developer portal and internal integration knowledge base for onboarding and partner enablement.
  • Help define SLOs/SLAs for integrations and collaborate with operations to measure and report against them.
  • Assist with vendor relationship management for managed integration platforms and provide technical input to procurement.
  • Provide regular metrics and reports on integration health, latency, error rates, and business impact to stakeholders.
  • Facilitate technical workshops and integration onboarding sessions with partner engineering teams.
  • Lead small POCs to evaluate new integration technologies (GraphQL federation, serverless integrations, managed iPaaS).

Required Skills & Competencies

Hard Skills (Technical)

  • RESTful API design and development (HTTP verbs, status codes, idempotency, HATEOAS concepts).
  • OpenAPI / Swagger specification authoring and API contract-first design.
  • Authentication & authorization protocols: OAuth 2.0, JWT, OpenID Connect, API key management.
  • Experience with GraphQL schema design and resolvers for complex data integrations.
  • Hands-on experience with API gateways and management platforms (Apigee, Kong, AWS API Gateway, Azure API Management).
  • Message queues and event streaming: Kafka, RabbitMQ, AWS SNS/SQS, Kinesis.
  • Data transformation and ETL concepts: JSON, XML, CSV parsing, XSLT, data mapping, and schema evolution handling.
  • Integration platforms and middleware: MuleSoft, Dell Boomi, Workato, Tray.io, or custom middleware solutions.
  • Proficiency with Postman, Swagger UI, curl, and API testing and mocking tools.
  • Strong SQL skills and familiarity with relational databases (Postgres, MySQL) and NoSQL stores (MongoDB, DynamoDB).
  • CI/CD, source control and automation: Git, GitHub/GitLab, Jenkins, CircleCI, GitHub Actions.
  • Containerization and cloud deployment: Docker, Kubernetes, AWS/Azure/GCP serverless and managed services.
  • Logging, monitoring and tracing: ELK/EFK, Prometheus/Grafana, OpenTelemetry, and centralized observability.
  • Familiarity with security and compliance controls for data integration (encryption, token management, secrets management).
  • Scripting and programming: JavaScript/Node.js, Python, Java, or C# for building integration code and lambda functions.
  • Unit, integration, contract and end-to-end test automation for APIs and integrations.

Soft Skills

  • Strong verbal and written communication with the ability to translate technical concepts for non‑technical stakeholders and external partners.
  • Excellent problem solving and analytical mindset with attention to detail for debugging complex integration flows.
  • Proven ability to manage expectations, prioritize tasks, and operate effectively in a fast-paced, cross‑functional environment.
  • Stakeholder management and customer-focused mindset when designing integration experiences and SLAs.
  • Collaborative team player who thrives in Agile ceremonies and contributes to continuous improvement.
  • Time management and execution discipline: delivering reliable integrations on schedule.
  • Mentoring and knowledge sharing to uplift junior engineers and cross-functional teams.
  • Negotiation and vendor management skills when evaluating third-party integration services or SaaS partners.

Education & Experience

Educational Background

Minimum Education:

  • Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, Software Engineering, or a related technical discipline OR equivalent professional experience.

Preferred Education:

  • Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or Information Systems with coursework in distributed systems, networking, or data integration.
  • Certifications (beneficial but not mandatory): MuleSoft Certified Developer, AWS Certified Developer/Architect, Apigee/Google Cloud API certification, or equivalent integration platform certifications.

Relevant Fields of Study:

  • Computer Science
  • Software Engineering
  • Information Systems
  • Data Engineering
  • Computer Networks

Experience Requirements

Typical Experience Range:

  • 3–7 years of hands‑on experience building and operating APIs and integrations in production environments.

Preferred:

  • 5+ years experience integrating enterprise systems and SaaS applications, with demonstrable experience in API lifecycle management, API security (OAuth2/JWT), event-driven architectures, and cloud services (AWS, Azure, or GCP).
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