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Key Responsibilities and Required Skills for EDI Analyst

💰 $ - $

Information TechnologyIntegrationSupply ChainEDI

🎯 Role Definition

An EDI Analyst is responsible for end-to-end Electronic Data Interchange operations: building, testing, deploying and supporting EDI maps and interfaces, onboarding and managing trading partner relationships, ensuring data integrity and compliance with industry standards (X12, EDIFACT), troubleshooting production issues and collaborating cross-functionally to align EDI flows with business processes and ERP systems. This role blends technical configuration, integration engineering and business-facing coordination to maintain high availability and SLA performance for B2B data flows.

📈 Career Progression

Typical Career Path

Entry Point From:

  • Junior EDI Analyst / EDI Support Technician
  • Integration Support Specialist / Middleware Support
  • Business Systems Analyst with EDI exposure

Advancement To:

  • Senior EDI Analyst / EDI Team Lead
  • Integration Architect / Solutions Architect
  • Manager, Integration Services or Supply Chain Systems

Lateral Moves:

  • Business Systems Analyst (ERP focus)
  • Supply Chain Integration Specialist / Trading Partner Manager

Core Responsibilities

Primary Functions

  • Design, develop and maintain EDI maps and translation logic for inbound and outbound transactions (X12, EDIFACT, flat files, XML, JSON), ensuring accurate transformation of trading partner formats into internal ERP schemas such as SAP, Oracle EBS, JD Edwards or Dynamics.
  • Lead end-to-end trading partner onboarding: collect specifications, configure communication channels (AS2, FTP/SFTP, VAN), create maps, perform partner testing and validate successful cutover to production.
  • Troubleshoot and resolve production EDI exceptions and errors—analyze interchange logs, translation reports and payloads to perform root cause analysis and implement permanent fixes to meet SLA targets.
  • Configure, test and support EDI transport and security protocols (AS2 certificates, S/MIME, TLS, SSH keys), including periodic certificate renewals, key rotations and encryption compliance activities.
  • Develop and maintain integration flows and interfaces in middleware platforms such as IBM Sterling B2B Integrator, IBM Gentran, Microsoft BizTalk, MuleSoft, Cleo Integration Cloud or equivalent tools.
  • Write, validate and optimize SQL queries, stored procedures and database scripts to reconcile EDI transactions with ERP order, invoice and ASN tables and to generate diagnostics and reconciliation reports.
  • Create and execute formal test plans including unit, system integration and user acceptance tests (UAT) for new EDI implementations, upgrades and change requests, coordinating testers and stakeholders.
  • Maintain comprehensive technical documentation: mapping specifications, interface diagrams, runbooks, error handling procedures and configuration change logs for auditability and knowledge transfer.
  • Collaborate directly with procurement, logistics, sales and customer service stakeholders to translate business requirements into EDI specifications and to ensure data fields meet downstream business rules.
  • Monitor EDI throughput and system health using logging, alerting and monitoring tools; tune mappings and transports to improve performance under peak volume periods.
  • Manage change control and release management for EDI artifacts, authoring change requests, performing impact analysis and participating in scheduled deployment windows.
  • Implement data validation and enrichment routines to ensure EDI payloads meet business validation rules (e.g., GLN, GTIN, UOM, price validation) prior to posting to ERP systems.
  • Support cross-border and regulatory requirements for B2B communications including customs, tax, trade compliance and electronic invoicing (e-invoicing) initiatives when applicable.
  • Collaborate with external VAN providers and third-party integrators to escalate and resolve connectivity or message delivery issues and to optimize message compression/throughput.
  • Automate repetitive operational tasks (reconciliation, exception routing, notification generation) using scripting (Python, PowerShell, Shell) or workflow automation within integration platforms.
  • Conduct periodic audits and quality checks on EDI flows to identify data drift, schema changes and opportunities for standardization across trading partners.
  • Provide on-call support and participate in incident management for critical outages, coordinating remediation, communication and post-mortem documentation.
  • Mentor junior EDI analysts and coordinate knowledge-sharing sessions to elevate team competency in mapping patterns, common error scenarios and tooling best practices.
  • Participate in architecture reviews and design sessions to recommend integration patterns, API vs EDI strategies, and hybrid solutions for modernizing legacy EDI flows.
  • Develop KPI dashboards and operational metrics for EDI performance, including message volumes, SLA compliance, exception rates and mean time to resolution (MTTR).
  • Assist procurement and legal teams with technical evaluations of trading partner EDI capabilities and with contract or statement of work technical appendices.
  • Support migration projects from legacy EDI stacks to cloud-based integration platforms, driving conversion of maps, test cases and partner communications.

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.

Required Skills & Competencies

Hard Skills (Technical)

  • Deep knowledge of EDI standards: ANSI X12, EDIFACT, TRADACOMS—ability to read and author transaction set/segment specifications and loops.
  • Hands-on experience with EDI mapping and translation tools such as IBM Sterling B2B Integrator, Gentran, Microsoft BizTalk, Cleo Integration Cloud, SPS Commerce, or MuleSoft.
  • Practical expertise configuring and troubleshooting secure transports: AS2 (including certificate management), SFTP, FTPS, VAN, HTTPS and API endpoints.
  • Strong SQL skills for data validation, reconciliation and troubleshooting across ERP databases (experience with T-SQL, PL/SQL or similar).
  • Familiarity integrating EDI with ERP systems (SAP IDoc, Oracle EDI, JD Edwards, Microsoft Dynamics) and knowledge of order-to-cash and procure-to-pay processes.
  • Experience with XML, JSON, flat-file parsing, schema validation (XSD), and conversion between file formats.
  • Scripting/automation skills (Python, PowerShell, Bash) to automate monitoring, remediation and data manipulations.
  • Proficiency with middleware and message queuing concepts and tools (MQ, Kafka, SFTP daemons, JMS).
  • Ability to use log analysis, monitoring and alerting tools (Splunk, ELK, Datadog, or platform-native consoles) to diagnose issues.
  • Strong understanding of security and compliance requirements for data in transit and at rest (TLS, PGP, auditing/GDPR implications).
  • Version control and release tooling experience (Git, CI/CD pipelines) for promoting EDI artifacts through environments.
  • Familiarity with API-based integrations and hybrid EDI/API strategies, including REST, SOAP and API management platforms.
  • Experience with trading partner life cycle management tools and processes, SLA management and commercial EDI onboarding checklists.

Soft Skills

  • Exceptional cross-functional communication: able to translate technical integration details into clear business impact for stakeholders.
  • Strong analytical and problem-solving mindset with attention to data integrity and transactional correctness.
  • Customer-facing negotiation skills for onboarding partners and resolving service-level or data disputes.
  • Time management and prioritization in fast-paced, production-critical environments.
  • Collaborative team-player who mentors junior staff and documents processes for knowledge continuity.
  • Adaptability to evolving technologies and continuous improvement orientation.
  • Clear written documentation skills for runbooks, technical specs and test plans.
  • Proactive ownership mentality with a focus on SLA adherence and operational excellence.

Education & Experience

Educational Background

Minimum Education:

  • Bachelor's degree in Information Systems, Computer Science, Business Analytics, Supply Chain, or a related technical field — or equivalent work experience in EDI/integration.

Preferred Education:

  • Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Supply Chain Management, or related discipline.
  • Certifications in integration platforms (e.g., IBM Sterling, MuleSoft Certified) or relevant cloud/integration certifications are a plus.

Relevant Fields of Study:

  • Information Technology / Computer Science
  • Supply Chain Management / Logistics
  • Business Information Systems
  • Data Analytics / Systems Engineering

Experience Requirements

Typical Experience Range:

  • 3–7 years of progressive EDI, integration, or middleware experience for mid-level roles; 7+ years for senior roles.

Preferred:

  • Proven track record of multiple full-lifecycle EDI implementations, trading partner onboarding, and support of high-volume B2B integrations.
  • Demonstrated experience with specific tools and technologies listed above (Sterling, Gentran, BizTalk, Cleo, AS2, SAP/Oracle integration).
  • Experience operating in Agile development environments and familiarity with DevOps/release practices for integrations.
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