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Key Responsibilities and Required Skills for Integration Consultant

💰 $90,000 - $140,000

IntegrationMiddlewareAPIsiPaaSIT Consulting

🎯 Role Definition

The Integration Consultant is responsible for designing, implementing, and supporting robust, secure, and scalable integration solutions that connect SaaS applications, legacy systems, databases, message queues, and external trading partners. The role requires strong hands-on experience with API-led architecture, middleware / iPaaS platforms (MuleSoft, Dell Boomi, TIBCO, IBM), event-driven architectures (Kafka, RabbitMQ), web services (REST, SOAP), data transformations (JSON, XML, XSLT), authentication and authorization (OAuth2, SAML), and DevOps practices (CI/CD, containers). The consultant works closely with product owners, architects, developers, operations, and business stakeholders throughout the entire integration lifecycle.

📈 Career Progression

Typical Career Path

Entry Point From:

  • Integration Developer / Middleware Developer
  • API Developer or Backend Developer
  • Systems Analyst with integration responsibilities

Advancement To:

  • Senior Integration Consultant / Lead Integration Architect
  • Integration Architect / Enterprise Architect
  • Head of Integration / Director of Platform & Integration

Lateral Moves:

  • API Product Manager
  • Cloud Architect
  • DevOps Engineer (focus on deployment & observability of integrations)

Core Responsibilities

Primary Functions

  • Lead end-to-end integration projects: gather business requirements, define integration patterns, design solution architecture, estimate effort, and guide implementation to production for cloud and on‑premise systems.
  • Design scalable API-led architectures and reusable integration assets (system APIs, process APIs, experience APIs) to accelerate delivery, improve maintainability, and enable product-driven integration strategies.
  • Build and configure integrations using middleware and iPaaS technologies such as MuleSoft (Anypoint Platform), Dell Boomi, TIBCO BusinessWorks, IBM Integration Bus / App Connect, Azure Logic Apps, or AWS API Gateway + Lambda.
  • Develop and maintain RESTful and SOAP web services, including versioning, contract definition, input/output schema design (JSON Schema, XSD), and backward-compatible changes.
  • Implement data mappings and transformations across JSON, XML, CSV, EDI formats using transformation languages and tools (DataWeave, XSLT, mapping components), ensuring data integrity and performance.
  • Create and manage synchronous and asynchronous messaging solutions using Kafka, RabbitMQ, JMS, or enterprise service buses; design topics/queues, partitioning, consumer groups, and idempotent consumers.
  • Implement secure authentication and authorization flows for APIs and integrations using OAuth2, JWT, OpenID Connect, SAML, and mutual TLS; enforce role-based access and token validation.
  • Configure and run B2B/EDI integrations – AS2, FTP/SFTP, VANs, X12, EDIFACT – negotiate trading partner setups, manage certificates, and ensure compliance with partner protocols.
  • Troubleshoot and resolve integration incidents and production issues, perform root cause analysis, produce RCA reports, and implement fixes or process changes to prevent recurrence.
  • Optimize runtime performance of integration flows: profile latency, identify bottlenecks, tune thread pools, connection pools, message batching, and memory footprints.
  • Implement robust error handling, retry policies, circuit breakers, and dead-letter queue strategies to improve resiliency and observability of integration solutions.
  • Work with cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, GCP) to deploy integration runtimes, manage identity and access (IAM), networking (VPC, subnets, peering), and arrange secure connectivity (VPN, Direct Connect).
  • Automate integration deployments using CI/CD pipelines (Jenkins, GitLab CI, Azure DevOps), containerization (Docker), and orchestration (Kubernetes) to enable repeatable, audited releases.
  • Create technical design documents, interface contracts, sequencing diagrams, sequence flows, and API specifications (OpenAPI / Swagger) to align developers and stakeholders.
  • Conduct API and integration security reviews and threat modeling to identify vulnerabilities (injection, broken auth, sensitive data exposure) and implement remediation.
  • Collaborate with product, QA, and operations teams to define integration test strategies including unit tests, contract tests, component tests, and end-to-end tests using Postman, SoapUI, JUnit, or similar.
  • Mentor junior integration engineers, conduct code and configuration reviews, share best practices for naming, modularization, and reuse of integration components.
  • Provide integration governance: manage API catalog, apply lifecycle policies, enforce SLAs, define monitoring and alerting thresholds, and publish runbooks and on-call rotation guidance.
  • Coordinate with infrastructure and networking teams to plan capacity, scaling strategies, load balancing, and disaster recovery for critical integration services.
  • Manage stakeholder communication: present progress updates, highlight risks and mitigation plans, facilitate technical workshops, and translate technical trade-offs into business impacts.
  • Evaluate and recommend new integration technologies, iPaaS platforms, and patterns (serverless, event-driven, change data capture) to modernize integration landscape and reduce technical debt.
  • Drive data migration and synchronization projects, ensuring referential integrity, reconciliation processes, and rollback strategies during cutovers and go-lives.
  • Implement logging, tracing, and distributed correlation (OpenTelemetry, Jaeger) to enable end-to-end visibility across microservices and integration flows.
  • Define SLAs for message delivery, error rates, and latency, and implement synthetic monitoring and real-time dashboards (Grafana, Splunk, New Relic) to ensure compliance.

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 pre-sales and solutioning teams with integration proof-of-concept builds, cost estimates, and technical feasibility assessments.
  • Maintain and update integration documentation, runbooks, and operational playbooks to improve handover and incident response.
  • Help define and administer API governance processes, including api-first design and contract enforcement via gateways.
  • Participate in vendor evaluations and license negotiations for middleware and integration platforms.
  • Deliver training sessions and brown-bag workshops to internal teams on integration best practices and new platform capabilities.
  • Contribute to continuous improvement initiatives by identifying automation opportunities and reducing manual handoffs.

Required Skills & Competencies

Hard Skills (Technical)

  • Deep hands-on experience with integration platforms: MuleSoft Anypoint, Dell Boomi, TIBCO BusinessWorks, IBM Integration Bus / App Connect, or equivalent iPaaS/ESB solutions.
  • Strong API design and implementation skills: OpenAPI/Swagger, RESTful principles, SOAP, WSDL, and API versioning strategies.
  • Proficiency with messaging systems and event streaming: Apache Kafka, RabbitMQ, JMS, and understanding of pub/sub design patterns and consumer group management.
  • Solid knowledge of data formats and transformation tools: JSON, XML, CSV, XSD, XSLT, DataWeave, and mapping/transformation best practices.
  • Experience with security standards for integrations: OAuth2, OpenID Connect, JWT, SAML, mTLS, certificate management, and encryption at rest/in transit.
  • Experience with B2B integration protocols and EDI: AS2, SFTP, VANs, X12, and EDIFACT implementations.
  • Familiarity with cloud integration patterns and services on AWS, Azure, or GCP (API Gateway, Lambda, Logic Apps, Event Grid, Cloud Pub/Sub).
  • Practical experience with CI/CD tooling for integration delivery: Jenkins, GitLab CI, Azure DevOps, Terraform for infra-as-code, and container pipelines.
  • Competent in logging, monitoring and tracing technologies: ELK/EFK, Splunk, New Relic, Prometheus, Grafana, Jaeger, OpenTelemetry.
  • Strong scripting and development skills: Java, JavaScript/Node.js, Python, or Groovy for custom connectors, extensions, and transformation logic.
  • Knowledge of database technologies: relational (Postgres, SQL Server, Oracle), NoSQL (MongoDB), and experience with CDC tools (Debezium) for data synchronization.
  • Familiarity with enterprise architecture, integration design patterns, and microservices architecture (bounded contexts, domain events).
  • Ability to perform performance tuning and capacity planning for high-throughput integration workloads.
  • Experience writing automated tests for integrations: unit tests, contract tests, mocks/stubs, and integration testing frameworks.

Soft Skills

  • Strong communication and stakeholder management skills: able to explain complex integration trade-offs to technical and non-technical audiences.
  • Problem solving and analytical thinking: diagnose production incidents quickly and define pragmatic remediation steps.
  • Leadership and mentoring: coach junior engineers, run design reviews, and instill best practices across delivery teams.
  • Project and time management: deliver multiple concurrent integration initiatives on schedule and within scope.
  • Customer-focused mindset: translate business requirements into pragmatic, scalable integration solutions that meet SLAs.
  • Collaboration and teamwork: work effectively in cross-functional agile teams with product owners, QA, and operations.
  • Adaptability and continuous learning: stay current with emerging integration technologies and apply them appropriately.
  • Attention to detail and documentation discipline: produce clear interface contracts, runbooks, and design artifacts.
  • Risk management and decision making: assess technical debt, propose remediation, and prioritize based on business impact.
  • Negotiation and vendor liaison skills: manage third-party vendors and partner onboarding for B2B integrations.

Education & Experience

Educational Background

Minimum Education:

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

Preferred Education:

  • Master's degree in Computer Science, Systems Engineering, or related field.
  • Professional certifications: MuleSoft Certified Integration Developer, MuleSoft Certified Developer, Dell Boomi Pro, TIBCO Certified, AWS Certified Solutions Architect, or similar.

Relevant Fields of Study:

  • Computer Science
  • Software Engineering
  • Information Systems
  • Electrical or Systems Engineering
  • Business Information Technology

Experience Requirements

Typical Experience Range: 3–8 years of professional experience in integration, middleware, API development, or related systems engineering roles.

Preferred:

  • 5+ years implementing enterprise integration solutions across cloud and on‑premise landscapes.
  • Demonstrable experience delivering at least one full lifecycle integration project in an enterprise environment, including requirements, design, development, testing, deployment, and production support.
  • Prior consultancy or client-facing experience desirable for roles involving pre-sales, solution architecture, and stakeholder workshops.
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