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Key Responsibilities and Required Skills for Integration Analyst

💰 $70,000 - $110,000

ITIntegrationMiddlewareAPIData

🎯 Role Definition

The Integration Analyst is a technical and business-facing role focused on designing, developing, testing, deploying and operationally supporting system-to-system integrations and APIs across the enterprise. This role bridges application owners, architects and engineering teams to deliver secure, resilient, and performant data and process integrations using middleware, ESB, iPaaS and cloud integration patterns. Key deliverables include integration specifications, data mappings, transformation logic, automated pipelines, runbooks, and proactive monitoring to meet SLAs and business requirements.


📈 Career Progression

Typical Career Path

Entry Point From:

  • Junior Integration Analyst or Integration Developer
  • Systems Analyst / Business Systems Analyst
  • Application Support Engineer or Middleware Support

Advancement To:

  • Senior Integration Analyst / Lead Integration Engineer
  • Integration Architect / Enterprise Integration Architect
  • Solutions Architect or Technical Delivery Manager

Lateral Moves:

  • API Developer / API Product Owner
  • Data Engineer / ETL Developer
  • DevOps Engineer / Site Reliability Engineer

Core Responsibilities

Primary Functions

  • Design and document end-to-end integration solutions, including API specifications, data flow diagrams, interface contracts, and error handling strategies that align with enterprise architecture and security standards.
  • Develop and configure integrations using middleware, ESB, or iPaaS platforms (for example MuleSoft, Dell Boomi, TIBCO, Informatica, SAP CPI) to reliably connect cloud and on‑prem applications.
  • Implement RESTful and SOAP-based APIs with clear versioning, authentication (OAuth2, JWT), and rate-limiting policies to support internal and external consumers.
  • Transform and map data between disparate schemas using XML, JSON, CSV and custom formats; produce reusable data transformation libraries and canonical data models.
  • Build and maintain ETL/ELT pipelines to extract, transform and load data between transactional systems, data warehouses, and analytics platforms while ensuring data integrity and lineage.
  • Configure and manage messaging infrastructure (Kafka, RabbitMQ, ActiveMQ) and/or event-driven architectures, including topic/queue design, retention, consumer groups and partitioning strategies.
  • Implement error handling, retry logic, dead-letter queues and alerting for failed transactions, ensuring business continuity and rapid recovery.
  • Create comprehensive test plans, unit tests, integration tests and support automated testing for integration changes to reduce regression risk.
  • Deploy integration artifacts using CI/CD pipelines (Git, Jenkins, GitLab CI, Azure DevOps), ensuring repeatable, auditable and automated releases across environments.
  • Monitor integration performance and availability using production monitoring and logging tools (Splunk, ELK, New Relic, Datadog), define key metrics, and implement proactive remediation actions.
  • Troubleshoot and resolve complex production incidents related to data flows, API failures, timeouts and performance bottlenecks, providing root-cause analysis and corrective plans.
  • Enforce security and compliance requirements within integrations, including data encryption, masking, PII handling, access control and audit trails to meet regulatory and corporate policies.
  • Collaborate with business stakeholders to gather integration requirements, translate them into technical specifications and prioritize delivery in alignment with business value.
  • Evaluate and recommend middleware, iPaaS and API management tools and patterns to optimize cost, scalability and maintainability of the integration landscape.
  • Lead integration proof-of-concepts (POCs) and technical evaluations for new connectors, adapters or cloud services to accelerate time to value.
  • Maintain and evolve integration architecture artifacts, standards, templates and best practices to drive consistency and reduce technical debt.
  • Coordinate with vendors, third-party service providers and SaaS partners to implement and validate secure connector configurations and SLAs.
  • Provide operational runbooks, knowledge transfer sessions and training to support teams and application owners for day-to-day integration support.
  • Perform capacity planning, performance tuning and optimization of integration flows to meet throughput and latency SLAs during peak loads.
  • Manage change control for integration endpoints, including version compatibility checks, deprecation plans and consumer communication.
  • Participate in Agile ceremonies, refine backlog items, estimate tasks and deliver integration features in sprint cycles with clear acceptance criteria.
  • Maintain detailed technical documentation, API catalogs and interface inventories in centralized repositories to support discoverability and reuse.
  • Assist in data governance initiatives by tagging data sources, tracking provenance, validating data quality rules and contributing to catalog efforts.

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 input into licensing, performance and cost estimates for integration platform consumption.
  • Mentor junior analysts and integration developers on platform best practices and coding standards.
  • Assist in security reviews, penetration tests and remediation of integration-related findings.
  • Work with QA and release management to coordinate regression testing and cutover plans for integration rollouts.

Required Skills & Competencies

Hard Skills (Technical)

  • API design and implementation (REST, SOAP, OpenAPI/Swagger) with strong understanding of versioning, pagination, throttling and caching.
  • Experience with integration platforms and middleware such as MuleSoft, Dell Boomi, TIBCO, Informatica, SAP CPI or equivalent iPaaS/ESB technologies.
  • Proficient in data formats and transformation languages: JSON, XML, XSLT, CSV, Avro, and experience doing complex data mapping.
  • Strong SQL skills for querying and validating data across relational databases (Oracle, SQL Server, PostgreSQL) and familiarity with NoSQL stores.
  • Hands-on experience with messaging and streaming platforms (Apache Kafka, RabbitMQ, ActiveMQ) and event-driven design patterns.
  • Scripting and automation (Python, Bash, JavaScript) for integration tasks, transformations and operational automation.
  • Familiarity with CI/CD tools (Jenkins, GitLab CI, Azure DevOps) and source control systems (Git) for automated deployment of integration artifacts.
  • Knowledge of cloud platforms and managed integration services (AWS, Azure, GCP) including API Gateway, Lambda, Logic Apps, or Cloud Functions.
  • Expertise in security standards and protocols: OAuth2, OpenID Connect, SAML, TLS, encryption at rest/in transit, token-based auth, and secure credential management.
  • Experience with monitoring, observability and logging tools (Splunk, ELK/Elastic Stack, Datadog, New Relic) to implement alerts and dashboards.
  • Familiarity with data governance, data lineage, and data quality frameworks and tools.
  • Working knowledge of containerization and orchestration (Docker, Kubernetes) is beneficial for modern deployment architectures.
  • Ability to author clear, reusable integration artifacts, API catalogs and technical runbooks.

Soft Skills

  • Strong stakeholder communication: ability to translate technical constraints into business terms and proactively manage expectations.
  • Analytical problem solving: methodical root-cause analysis and corrective action planning for production incidents.
  • Collaboration and teamwork: works effectively across cross-functional teams including product owners, architects, QA and operations.
  • Time management and prioritization: handle multiple concurrent integration requests and incidents while meeting SLAs.
  • Attention to detail: precise data mapping, transformation logic and version control to avoid data corruption or service disruption.
  • Adaptability: learns new platforms and tools quickly in fast-changing integration landscapes.
  • Documentation and knowledge sharing: create clear diagrams, runbooks and training artifacts to build team capability.
  • Customer orientation: focus on delivering reliable, usable integrations that meet internal or external consumer needs.

Education & Experience

Educational Background

Minimum Education:

  • Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, Software Engineering, or related technical discipline — or equivalent work experience.

Preferred Education:

  • Master’s degree in a relevant technical field or industry certifications (MuleSoft Certified Developer/Architect, Dell Boomi Professional, AWS/Azure cloud certifications, API Management certs).

Relevant Fields of Study:

  • Computer Science
  • Information Systems
  • Software Engineering
  • Electrical/Computer Engineering
  • Business Information Systems / Management Information Systems

Experience Requirements

Typical Experience Range: 2–7 years working in application integration, middleware, API development or enterprise systems integration roles.

Preferred:

  • 4+ years of hands-on experience with enterprise integration platforms, API design and production support in medium to large-scale distributed environments.
  • Prior exposure to cloud-native integrations, event-driven architectures, DevOps practices and enterprise security/compliance requirements.