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Key Responsibilities and Required Skills for Application Integration Engineer

💰 $ - $

EngineeringIntegrationSoftware DevelopmentCloudAPI

🎯 Role Definition

As an Application Integration Engineer, you are responsible for designing, building, testing, and operating robust, scalable integration solutions that connect cloud and on-premise applications, SaaS platforms, and backend systems. You will work closely with product teams, architects, and operations to enable data flow, transform payloads, secure communication, and automate business processes. This role requires deep technical knowledge of APIs, messaging systems, integration platforms (iPaaS/ESB), event-driven architectures, and cloud native services, combined with strong stakeholder management to translate business requirements into reliable integration designs.

📈 Career Progression

Typical Career Path

Entry Point From:

  • Integration Developer / Middleware Developer
  • Software Engineer / Backend Developer
  • Systems Analyst / Business Systems Analyst

Advancement To:

  • Senior Integration Engineer / Lead Integration Engineer
  • Integration Architect / Enterprise Architect
  • Solutions Architect / API Architect
  • Technical Lead / Engineering Manager

Lateral Moves:

  • DevOps / Platform Engineer
  • Cloud Integration Engineer
  • Data Engineer
  • API Product Manager

Core Responsibilities

Primary Functions

  • Design, develop, and maintain end-to-end integration solutions that connect CRM, ERP, e-commerce, custom applications, and third-party SaaS platforms using REST, SOAP, GraphQL, and messaging protocols to ensure reliable data exchange and process automation.
  • Architect and implement API-led connectivity including design of façade APIs, process APIs, and system APIs to enable discoverable, secure, and reusable integration surfaces across the organization.
  • Build event-driven integrations using message brokers and streaming platforms (e.g., Kafka, RabbitMQ, Amazon SNS/SQS) to support near real-time data flows, event sourcing, and pub/sub patterns for scalable systems.
  • Lead the implementation of iPaaS/ESB solutions (e.g., MuleSoft, Dell Boomi, TIBCO, Azure Logic Apps) including connector configuration, flow orchestration, and reuse of integration assets to reduce time-to-market.
  • Translate business requirements and functional specifications into technical integration designs, data mappings, transformation logic, and sequence diagrams that clearly articulate end-to-end behavior.
  • Create robust transformation and enrichment layers for XML, JSON, CSV and proprietary formats using XSLT, mapping tools, or code-based transformers to normalize data between systems.
  • Author and maintain comprehensive API documentation, OpenAPI/Swagger specifications, and integration runbooks to support developer onboarding, QA, and operations.
  • Implement security controls for integrations including OAuth2, JWT, mTLS, API gateways, tokenization, encryption at-rest and in-transit, and role-based access controls to meet corporate and regulatory requirements.
  • Configure and operate API gateways and management platforms (e.g., Apigee, Kong, AWS API Gateway) to provide routing, rate limiting, authentication, analytics, and lifecycle management for APIs.
  • Develop automated CI/CD pipelines for integration artifacts, tests, and deployments using tools such as Jenkins, GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, or Azure DevOps to ensure consistent, repeatable releases.
  • Create and execute unit, integration, and contract tests for integrations; implement test harnesses and mocks to validate error handling, retry logic, and idempotency.
  • Monitor integration health and performance using observability tooling (Prometheus, Grafana, ELK/EFK stack, Splunk, New Relic) and proactively troubleshoot latency, throughput, and error spikes.
  • Implement message replay, dead-letter processing, and compensating transaction strategies to ensure data integrity and recovery from downstream failures.
  • Optimize integrations for performance and cost by tuning thread pools, batching, connection pools, caching strategies, and cloud resource allocations.
  • Collaborate with cloud architects to design hybrid integration patterns and secure connectivity between on-premise systems and cloud platforms (AWS/Azure/GCP) including VPN, ExpressRoute, or Direct Connect.
  • Integrate with SaaS ecosystems (e.g., Salesforce, Workday, ServiceNow, NetSuite) by building connectors, handling API rate limits, and supporting bulk data migrations and delta syncs.
  • Manage change control and release schedules for integration changes; coordinate with cross-functional teams to plan deployments that minimize business disruption.
  • Provide technical leadership in integration reviews, design patterns, and governance forums to establish standards, reusable templates, and best practices for the integration platform.
  • Mentor junior engineers and conduct code/design reviews to improve team quality, maintainability, and security of integration codebases.
  • Participate in incident response and post-mortem reviews for production integration outages; drive root cause analysis and implement preventive measures and monitoring improvements.
  • Evaluate new integration technologies, connectors, and third-party services; conduct proof-of-concepts and recommend platform investments that align with the enterprise roadmap.
  • Ensure compliance with data protection, privacy, and regulatory requirements (e.g., GDPR, HIPAA) in integration flows and data storage practices.
  • Create mapping, transformation and reconciliation processes for ETL/ELT scenarios where integration interacts with data warehouses and analytics platforms.
  • Maintain a backlog of integration work, estimate effort, and work within Agile/Scrum teams to deliver prioritized business capabilities on time and within scope.

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.
  • Assist in vendor selection and manage relationships with integration tool providers and managed service partners.
  • Train business and operations teams on integration features, new APIs, service level agreements, and escalation procedures.
  • Help define and enforce SLAs and SLOs for integration services; track compliance and provide regular reporting to stakeholders.
  • Maintain and update runbooks, troubleshooting checklists, and knowledge base articles to streamline support and handoffs.

Required Skills & Competencies

Hard Skills (Technical)

  • API design and management (REST, OpenAPI/Swagger, GraphQL, SOAP) and hands-on experience producing consumer-friendly API contracts.
  • Experience with middleware/iPaaS/ESB platforms such as MuleSoft, Dell Boomi, TIBCO, Informatica, Azure Logic Apps, or similar enterprise integration platforms.
  • Proficiency with event streaming and messaging systems (Apache Kafka, RabbitMQ, Amazon SNS/SQS, ActiveMQ) and designing event-driven architectures.
  • Strong programming/scripting skills in languages commonly used for integrations (Java, Node.js, Python, Groovy) and building custom connectors.
  • Data transformation and mapping expertise (JSON, XML, XSLT, CSV) including use of mapping tools and code-based transformations.
  • Familiarity with API gateways and management solutions (Apigee, Kong, AWS API Gateway) for securing and governing APIs.
  • Solid understanding of authentication and authorization protocols (OAuth 2.0, OpenID Connect, SAML, JWT) and secure integration patterns.
  • Experience building CI/CD pipelines, automated testing suites, and infrastructure-as-code for integration deployments (Terraform, ARM templates, CloudFormation).
  • Knowledge of relational and NoSQL databases (PostgreSQL, MySQL, MongoDB, DynamoDB) and experience with data integration/ETL processes.
  • Cloud integration experience across AWS, Azure or GCP services (e.g., AWS Lambda, Azure Functions, Event Grid, Pub/Sub) and hybrid connectivity strategies.
  • Monitoring and observability skills using tools like Prometheus, Grafana, ELK stack, Splunk, or cloud-native monitoring solutions.
  • Troubleshooting, root-cause analysis, and performance tuning of integration flows, connection pooling, and message throughput.
  • Familiarity with enterprise architecture and integration patterns (EIP, transactional, idempotent, saga/compensating transactions).
  • Knowledge of compliance and data protection requirements (GDPR, HIPAA) as they apply to data in transit and at rest.
  • Experience integrating common enterprise SaaS systems (Salesforce, Workday, ServiceNow, Oracle, SAP) and handling bulk/batch operations and incremental syncs.

Soft Skills

  • Excellent verbal and written communication skills for interacting with stakeholders, documenting designs, and producing API documentation.
  • Strong stakeholder management and ability to translate business needs into technical requirements and prioritized backlog items.
  • Problem-solving mindset with analytical attention to detail when diagnosing complex, cross-system issues.
  • Collaborative team player who can work effectively with product managers, QA, operations, and security teams.
  • Time management and prioritization skills to balance multiple integrations, maintenance tasks, and project deliverables.
  • Adaptability to evolving architectures, new tooling, and changing business priorities.
  • Mentoring and coaching capability to uplift junior engineers and share integration best practices.
  • Customer-oriented approach to ensure integrations meet SLAs, data quality, and performance expectations.
  • Facilitation skills for design workshops, sprint planning, and cross-team technical reviews.
  • Resilience under pressure during production incidents and ability to communicate status clearly to stakeholders.

Education & Experience

Educational Background

Minimum Education:

  • Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Information Systems, or a related technical field, or equivalent practical experience.

Preferred Education:

  • Master's degree in Computer Science, Systems Engineering, or MBA with technical focus; or relevant professional certifications (MuleSoft Certified Developer, Dell Boomi Developer, AWS Certified Developer/Architect, Certified Kubernetes Administrator).

Relevant Fields of Study:

  • Computer Science
  • Information Systems
  • Software Engineering
  • Systems Integration
  • Cloud Computing / Distributed Systems

Experience Requirements

Typical Experience Range: 3–7 years in application integration, middleware development, or API engineering.

Preferred: 5+ years of hands-on experience delivering enterprise-scale integrations across cloud and on-premise systems, with demonstrable experience in at least one major iPaaS/ESB platform and event-driven systems.

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