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Key Responsibilities and Required Skills for Cloud Integration Engineer

💰 $90,000 - $160,000

CloudIntegrationDevOpsAPIMiddleware

🎯 Role Definition

This role requires a Cloud Integration Engineer to design, implement, secure and operate integrations that connect SaaS applications, microservices and enterprise systems across public cloud platforms. The ideal candidate combines hands-on experience with iPaaS/API management and public cloud (AWS, Azure, or GCP), strong scripting and automation skills, and an understanding of integration patterns (synchronous APIs, asynchronous messaging, ETL/ELT). This role is responsible for the full lifecycle of integration solutions: architecture, development, testing, deployment, monitoring, and operational support. You'll work closely with product owners, platform engineers, security teams and third-party vendors to deliver reliable, scalable, and cost-effective integration services.

Common keywords: cloud integration, API management, iPaaS, middleware, microservices, event-driven architecture, AWS, Azure, GCP, Kubernetes, CI/CD, Terraform, Kafka, REST, SOAP, OAuth.

📈 Career Progression

Typical Career Path

Entry Point From:

  • Integration Developer / Middleware Developer
  • Cloud Engineer / Cloud Operations Engineer
  • Backend Developer or DevOps Engineer with integration focus

Advancement To:

  • Senior Cloud Integration Engineer / Lead Integration Engineer
  • Integration Architect / Cloud Solutions Architect
  • Platform Engineering Manager or Head of Integration

Lateral Moves:

  • API Product Manager
  • Data Engineer (streaming integrations)
  • Site Reliability Engineer (SRE) or Platform Engineer

Core Responsibilities

Primary Functions

  • Design, architect and implement scalable cloud-native integration solutions that connect internal and external systems using best-practice integration patterns (API-led, event-driven, pub/sub, request/response, ETL/ELT).
  • Build and maintain robust RESTful and SOAP APIs, ensuring consistent versioning, contract management, schema validation (JSON Schema / XML schema) and backward compatibility.
  • Develop, configure and operate iPaaS and middleware platforms (e.g., MuleSoft, Dell Boomi, SnapLogic, IBM App Connect) to accelerate integration delivery and standardize connectivity.
  • Implement API management and gateway solutions (Apigee, Kong, AWS API Gateway, Azure API Management) including authentication, rate-limiting, caching, analytics and monetization where applicable.
  • Create connectors and adaptors for SaaS applications (Salesforce, Workday, ServiceNow, Netsuite) and on-prem systems (ERP, mainframe, databases), including robust error handling and reconciliation patterns.
  • Design and implement event-driven architectures using message brokers and streaming platforms (Kafka, AWS SNS/SQS, Google Pub/Sub, RabbitMQ), including schema registry, partitioning, retention and consumer group management.
  • Author integration flows, transformation logic and data mappings using ETL/ELT tools, stream processing frameworks (Kafka Streams, Flink), or custom microservices as needed.
  • Implement secure authentication and authorization for integrations using OAuth2, OIDC, JWT, SAML and service-to-service identity patterns; integrate with IAM systems (AWS IAM, Azure AD).
  • Build and maintain CI/CD pipelines for integration artifacts and platform configurations using Git, GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, Jenkins, or Azure DevOps to enable automated testing and deployment.
  • Use infrastructure-as-code (Terraform, CloudFormation, ARM Templates) to provision and manage cloud resources, VPCs, networking, API gateways, and middleware stacks in a repeatable and auditable way.
  • Monitor, instrument and tune integration performance using observability tools (Datadog, New Relic, Splunk, Prometheus, Grafana) and implement alerting and SLO/SLI driven operational practices.
  • Troubleshoot production incidents, perform root cause analysis, and implement permanent fixes and runbooks to reduce recurrence and Mean Time To Repair (MTTR).
  • Implement data protection, encryption (in transit and at rest), masking and adherence to compliance requirements (PCI, HIPAA, GDPR) for sensitive integration data flows.
  • Establish and enforce integration governance: API lifecycle management, naming conventions, version control, access control, dependency mapping, and documentation standards.
  • Collaborate with product owners, architects, security, and operations teams to translate business requirements into technical integration designs with cost and scalability considerations.
  • Write high-quality technical documentation: API contracts, interface specifications, sequence diagrams, deployment runbooks and operational playbooks for on-call teams.
  • Lead proof-of-concepts (POCs) to evaluate new integration technologies, iPaaS platforms, and cloud services to improve reliability, velocity and cost-efficiency.
  • Optimize integration cost and performance by right-sizing instances, leveraging managed services (e.g., managed Kafka, serverless Lambda/Functions) and implementing caching or batching where appropriate.
  • Mentor junior engineers, run design reviews, and contribute to team standards, reusable templates, and accelerators for faster, safer delivery.
  • Manage versioning, backward compatibility and migration strategies for APIs and integrations to minimize customer impact during upgrades or platform changes.
  • Coordinate third-party vendor integrations and onboarding, including security reviews, SLA negotiations and operational handover.
  • Conduct regular architecture and security reviews of integration solutions to identify technical debt, single points of failure and opportunities for modernization.

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.
  • Provide 2nd/3rd-line support for integration-related incidents and coordinate with application owners to restore service.
  • Maintain CI/CD pipelines and reusable templates for integration artifacts and deployment patterns.
  • Contribute to cost tracking and reporting for integration platform consumption across business units.
  • Participate in security incident response for integration systems and assist with forensic log analysis.
  • Help evaluate and onboard third-party connectors and marketplaces for iPaaS vendors.
  • Conduct periodic capacity planning and performance testing to validate scale targets.

Required Skills & Competencies

Hard Skills (Technical)

  • Cloud platforms: deep hands-on experience with AWS, Azure or Google Cloud Platform (GCP) services and native integration options (e.g., AWS Lambda, API Gateway, EventBridge, SQS, SNS; Azure Functions, Service Bus).
  • iPaaS / Middleware: experience with MuleSoft, Dell Boomi, SnapLogic, IBM App Connect, or equivalent enterprise integration platforms.
  • API design & management: expertise in REST, SOAP, GraphQL, API Gateway and API management platforms (Apigee, Kong, AWS API Gateway, Azure API Management).
  • Messaging & streaming: Kafka, RabbitMQ, AWS SNS/SQS, Google Pub/Sub, streaming frameworks (Kafka Streams, Flink) and schema management (Avro, Protobuf).
  • Security & Identity: OAuth2, OIDC, SAML, JWT, TLS, service principals, role-based access control and integration with identity providers (Okta, Azure AD).
  • Scripting & programming: experience writing integration code and automation in Python, Java, Node.js, Groovy or similar languages.
  • Infrastructure as Code: Terraform, CloudFormation or ARM templates for provisioning integration infrastructure.
  • CI/CD & automation: Jenkins, GitLab CI, GitHub Actions, Azure DevOps, artifact repositories and automated test suites.
  • Data formats & transformations: JSON, XML, CSV, XSLT, and knowledge of data mapping, canonical models and transformation tools.
  • Monitoring & observability: Datadog, Splunk, New Relic, Prometheus, Grafana and distributed tracing (OpenTelemetry, Jaeger, Zipkin).
  • Databases & storage: SQL and NoSQL databases (Postgres, MySQL, DynamoDB, MongoDB) and cloud storage (S3, Azure Blob).
  • Containerization & orchestration: Docker, Kubernetes and familiarity with deploying integration microservices in container platforms.
  • Networking & security: VPC, subnets, VPN, peering, firewalls, load balancers and secure connectivity patterns (PrivateLink, VPC endpoints).
  • Testing & quality: contract testing, integration testing, mocking/stubbing, unit testing and test automation strategies.
  • Logging and error handling best practices: structured logging, correlation IDs, dead-letter queues, and retry/backoff strategies.

Soft Skills

  • Excellent written and verbal communication for technical and non-technical stakeholders.
  • Strong problem-solving mindset and analytical thinking to diagnose complex distributed-system issues.
  • Collaborative team player able to work across product, security, operations and vendor teams.
  • Customer-focused: ability to translate business requirements into pragmatic, supportable integration solutions.
  • Time management and prioritization across competing production and project demands.
  • Mentoring and leadership: coach junior engineers and drive best-practice adoption.
  • Adaptability to changing cloud services, vendor features and enterprise needs.
  • Attention to detail for documentation, compliance and change control practices.
  • Stakeholder management and negotiation skills for coordinating third-party integrations and SLAs.
  • Continuous learning orientation to evaluate and adopt new integration patterns and tools.

Education & Experience

Educational Background

Minimum Education:

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

Preferred Education:

  • Master's degree in Computer Science, Cloud Computing, or related discipline is a plus.
  • Professional certifications such as AWS Certified Solutions Architect, Azure Solutions Architect, MuleSoft Certified, or Google Cloud Certified are advantageous.

Relevant Fields of Study:

  • Computer Science
  • Information Technology
  • Software Engineering
  • Cloud Computing
  • Distributed Systems

Experience Requirements

Typical Experience Range: 3–8+ years of professional experience in system integration, middleware, or cloud engineering roles.

Preferred: 5+ years designing and operating integrations in production, with demonstrable experience in at least one major cloud (AWS/Azure/GCP), API management platform, and messaging/streaming technology. Experience leading integration projects, mentoring teams, and contributing to integration governance is highly desirable.

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