Lead Integration Architect

Role Summary

The Lead Integration Architect/Developer is a senior-level technical expert accountable for the design, development, and modernization of enterprise integration systems. This position combines architectural leadership with active hands-on coding, framework creation, and mentorship. The individual will own the technical direction for connecting and securing distributed applications, SaaS platforms, data systems, and legacy software using modern DevSecOps approaches.

Core Responsibilities

• Develop and maintain the integration reference architecture and strategic roadmap encompassing API management, iPaaS, event-driven messaging, workflows, data transfers, and legacy system remediation.
• Set and uphold engineering standards related to APIs, event schemas, versioning, documentation, automated testing, source control, deployment pipelines, secrets management, resilience, error handling, and operational support.
• Create and manage an integration catalog detailing existing integrations, owners, data flows, system consumers, and associated operational and security risks.
• Provide technical design validation for projects and procurements ensuring alignment with KAUST integration standards, avoiding unnecessary customization, and facilitating appropriate API and data handling solutions.
• Lead design, development, and maintenance of integration services such as APIs, events, messaging flows, connectors, transformation scripts, testing frameworks, and CI/CD workflows with personal active contribution.
• Establish reusable integration patterns utilizing technologies including REST/OData APIs, SOAP (when necessary), IDocs/BAPIs, event/webhook patterns, message queues, managed file transfers, ETL/ELT, and change data capture techniques.
• Enhance operational observability and reliability through monitoring, alerting, dashboards, audit logs, reconciliation procedures, incident management, and continuous improvement processes.
• Assess and mitigate legacy integration risks by evaluating point-to-point interfaces, batch jobs, database links, unmanaged scripts, and vendor feeds; develop plans for wrapping, replacing, retiring, or tolerating these.
• Manage platform, vendor, and financial aspects including budgets, licenses, service levels, vendor performance, and contract obligations related to integration solutions.
• Guide and develop a technical team through work allocation, mentoring, performance evaluations, recruitment support, quality assurance, and fostering a collaborative engineering culture.
• Serve as a trusted advisor to enterprise applications, data, cybersecurity, identity, infrastructure, and business product teams ensuring integration supports business processes, data quality, security, privacy, and resilience.
• Mature Agile and DevOps methodologies by managing visible backlogs, prioritizing stakeholder demands, iterative delivery planning, deployment frequency improvements, and risk reduction via automation.
• Perform other relevant tasks aligned with the employee's knowledge and skills.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, IT, Engineering, or related, or equivalent experience and education.
• Ongoing professional development in integration engineering, cloud platforms, DevOps, cybersecurity, enterprise architecture, or related areas.

Preferred Certifications

• Certifications in SAP BTP/Integration Suite, Azure Integration Services, AWS, API management, MuleSoft, Boomi, Kafka/event streaming, Agile, DevOps, or Enterprise Architecture (none mandatory).

Required Expertise

• Proficient in integration engineering involving APIs, event-driven messaging, iPaaS/connectors, orchestration, batch/file transfer, data transformation, and security.
• Strong discipline in software engineering with clean code, automated testing, CI/CD, infrastructure-as-code, source control, peer reviews, and release management.
• Ability to balance architectural vision with delivery pragmatism, managing standards and building practical solutions within complex legacy environments.
• Agile and DevOps leadership skills to manage backlogs, iterative delivery, flow optimization, outcome measurement, and operational accountability integration.
• Proven people leadership and coaching skills for a small technical team, enhancing capabilities, providing feedback, and cultivating a trustful engineering environment.
• Security and resilience awareness covering authentication, authorization, encryption, secrets management, auditing, vulnerability handling, data protection, and service continuity.
• Understanding of data and master data concepts including canonical data models, ownership, lineage, quality, metadata, and distinction between operational and analytical data pipelines.
• Stakeholder and vendor management abilities to influence business and technical parties while maintaining accountability and technical depth.
• Excellent communication to articulate integration risks, trade-offs, and progress to diverse audiences including executives and technical teams.
• Capability to troubleshoot complex multi-system failures, lead incident resolution, and transform recurring issues into engineering solutions.
• Practical knowledge of SAP integration leveraging standard APIs/event mechanisms while avoiding excessive customization and tight coupling.

Desired Additional Experience

• Exposure to sectors like higher education, research, government, healthcare, or public sector environments.
• Experience integrating identity/access management systems, student, HR, finance, procurement, research, facilities, data lakehouse or analytics platforms.
• Familiarity integrating SAP S/4HANA systems.