Lead Solution Architect - Integration for Airport Ecosystems

Role Overview

As Lead Solution Architect - Integration, you will be responsible for developing and overseeing the integration and interoperability architecture that links the airport ecosystem including airlines, ground services, government agencies, retail, and partners. This will involve establishing robust, secure, and scalable integration strategies in a complex 24/7 multi-vendor environment.

Key Duties and Responsibilities

• Develop and maintain integration architecture, patterns, and standards including APIs, ESB/iPaaS, messaging frameworks, event-driven and streaming architectures.
• Design interfaces among airport operational systems and external partners, ensuring adherence to industry guidelines such as IATA and Airport Collaborative Decision Making (A-CDM).
• Create and govern integration blueprints, API contracts, and interface specifications.
• Engineer integrations to ensure high availability, throughput, error handling, and failover capabilities.
• Incorporate security measures and data protection throughout integration workflows.
• Establish monitoring, logging, and observability frameworks for interface operations.
• Lead and mentor integration architects, ensuring quality governance of integration efforts.
• Support project estimation, planning, and risk management in the integration domain.
• Collaborate effectively with stakeholders and vendors within the airport ecosystem.

Required Experience and Skills

• Proven expertise in leading complex, multi-system integration projects at scale.
• Strong knowledge of API and REST design, ESB/iPaaS platforms such as MuleSoft, Azure Integration Services, and Boomi.
• Experience with messaging systems including Kafka and MQ, and event-driven design principles.
• Competence in interface specification, data mapping, API contract creation, and management.
• Skills in designing resilient and secure integrations for critical systems requiring 24/7 uptime.
• Leadership and communication abilities to manage teams and engage multi-stakeholder environments.

Preferred Qualifications and Additional Skills

• Familiarity with aviation industry standards and systems including IATA messaging, A-CDM, AODB, baggage handling and passenger systems (BHS/BRS, CUPPS/CUSS).
• Certifications in integration or cloud technologies such as MuleSoft, Azure, AWS.
• Experience working within aviation, transportation, or other critical infrastructure sectors.
• Understanding of operational technology (OT), Internet of Things (IoT) integration, and Managed Services Integration (MSI) operating frameworks.

Educational Background

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related fields, or equivalent professional experience. Additional certifications in integration, cloud, or security domains are highly desirable.

Core Competencies

Integration and systems thinking, strategic design leadership, meticulousness, strong security orientation, vendor collaboration, clear communication, and resilience in delivering solutions.