Lead Integration Engineer
Contract to Hire
Hybrid/Remote in Dallas or Atlanta
Job Description:
Summary:
We are seeking an experienced and driven Lead Integrations Engineer to join our enterprise technology team. This role is central to designing and delivering robust, event-driven integration solutions on AWS, connecting enterprise systems, SaaS platforms, and internal services through scalable, cloud-native architecture. The ideal candidate brings deep hands-on expertise across our core stack Apache Kafka, AWS EventBridge, SNS, SQS, ECS, and EKS combined with a strong grounding in enterprise integration patterns (EIP) and service-oriented architecture (SOA). You will champion event-driven architecture (EDA) as a foundational design principle, drive API strategy, manage infrastructure through Terraform, and own our GitHub-based delivery pipeline aligning integration efforts with broader business objectives and delivering reliable, observable, and cost-optimized solutions at enterprise scale.
Key Responsibilities:
Strategic Leadership & Architecture
Integration Strategy: Define and own the enterprise integration strategy, aligning event-driven and API-based patterns with business goals across domains.
Architecture Leadership: Lead solution architecture for complex, multi-system integrations on AWS covering EDA, SOA, microservices, and hybrid connectivity patterns.
Cloud Cost Optimization: Govern AWS resource usage, identify cost reduction opportunities, and ensure integrations are designed for efficiency at scale.
Roadmap Ownership: Develop and maintain the integration platform roadmap, balancing technical debt retirement with new capability delivery.
Technical Design & Implementation:
Event-Driven Architecture: Design and implement EDA solutions using Apache Kafka (MSK), AWS EventBridge (including Pipes & Scheduler), SNS, and SQS to enable loosely coupled, asynchronous, and real-time communication across enterprise systems.
Kafka Platform Ownership: Own the design, deployment, and operational health of Apache Kafka clusters (Amazon MSK) defining topic design standards, consumer group strategies, schema governance (Schema Registry), and dead-letter handling patterns.
Container-Based Integration Services: Architect and deploy integration workloads on Amazon ECS (Fargate) and EKS, designing containerised microservices, event consumers, and API adapters that are observable, auto-scaling, and production-hardened.
API & Service Integration: Build scalable API integrations using AWS API Gateway, Lambda, and Step Functions applying RESTful, GraphQL, and AsyncAPI patterns as appropriate, with contract-first design enforced across all services.
Enterprise Messaging & Workflow: Apply enterprise messaging patterns using SNS fan-out, SQS FIFO queues, EventBridge event buses, and Step Functions to orchestrate complex, stateful, and distributed workflows.
Data Integration & Streaming: Build real-time and batch data pipelines using Kafka Streams, Kinesis, AWS Glue, and DMS to support data movement across operational and analytical systems.
Legacy Modernization: Lead the migration of legacy point-to-point and ESB-based integrations to cloud-native, event-driven architectures on AWS, using Kafka and EventBridge as the backbone.
Infrastructure as Code: Define and manage all integration infrastructure in Terraform including MSK clusters, ECS/EKS workloads, EventBridge rules, SQS/SNS resources, and IAM policies enforcing module standards, remote state management, and drift detection.
CI/CD with GitHub Actions: Design and own CI/CD pipelines using GitHub Actions implementing branch protection, environment promotion gates, automated testing, container image builds, Terraform plan/apply workflows, and security scanning (SAST, dependency checks).
Enterprise Integration Patterns & Governance:
EIP Implementation: Apply canonical enterprise integration patterns including message routing, transformation, aggregation, publish/subscribe, saga, and outbox patterns to solve complex integration challenges.
SOA Governance: Enforce service design standards, versioning policies, and contract-first API development across all integration workloads.
Observability & Reliability: Implement end-to-end observability using AWS CloudWatch, X-Ray, and distributed tracing to ensure integration health, SLA adherence, and rapid incident response.
Security & Compliance: Ensure integrations adhere to enterprise security standards applying IAM least-privilege, VPC private endpoints, secrets management (AWS Secrets Manager), and data encryption in transit and at rest.
Qualifications:
Education
Bachelor s or Master s degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or a related technical field or equivalent work experience
Experience:
5+ years of software or integration engineering experience, with at least 5 years focused on enterprise-scale integration platforms.
4+ years of hands-on, production experience with Apache Kafka (ideally Amazon MSK) including cluster operations, topic design, consumer group management, and Schema Registry.
Strong working knowledge of AWS EventBridge, SNS, and SQS with demonstrated experience designing publish/subscribe, fan-out, and event routing topologies at scale.
Hands-on experience deploying and operating containerised workloads on Amazon ECS (Fargate) and/or EKS in production environments.
Demonstrated experience writing and maintaining Terraform modules for AWS infrastructure, including remote state, workspaces, and CI/CD-integrated plan/apply workflows via GitHub Actions.
Proven track record leading integration engineering teams and delivering complex, multi-system programmes on time.
Experience modernising legacy ESB or point-to-point integrations to cloud-native, event-driven architectures.
Technical Skills:
Messaging & Event Streaming
Apache Kafka / Amazon MSK: topic design, partitioning strategy, consumer groups, Schema Registry (Avro/JSON Schema/Protobuf), Kafka Streams, Connect
AWS EventBridge: custom event buses, event rules & targets, EventBridge Pipes, Scheduler
AWS SNS & SQS: pub/sub fan-out, FIFO queues, dead-letter queues, large message handling, cross-account event routing
Compute & Container Platforms
Amazon ECS (Fargate): task definitions, service discovery, auto-scaling, capacity providers
Amazon EKS: Kubernetes workload deployment, Helm charts, cluster add-ons, IRSA, HPA/KEDA for event-driven scaling
AWS Lambda: event-source mappings (Kafka, SQS, EventBridge), concurrency controls, cold-start mitigation
Additional AWS Services
API Gateway (REST & HTTP APIs), Step Functions, Kinesis Data Streams & Firehose, DMS, Glue
IAM, VPC (PrivateLink, endpoints), Secrets Manager, CloudWatch, X-Ray, S3, DynamoDB
Infrastructure as Code & CI/CD
Terraform: module authoring, remote state (S3 + DynamoDB lock), workspaces, tfvars strategy, policy-as-code (Sentinel / OPA)
GitHub & GitHub Actions: branch strategy, reusable workflows, environment secrets, Terraform plan/apply automation, container builds & ECR push, SAST & dependency scanning
Docker: multi-stage builds, image optimisation, ECR lifecycle policies
Architecture & Patterns
Event-driven architecture (EDA), service-oriented architecture (SOA), microservices, event mesh
Enterprise integration patterns: publish/subscribe, saga, outbox, CQRS, event sourcing, scatter-gather, competing consumers
API design: REST, GraphQL, AsyncAPI, OpenAPI/Swagger; contract-first and versioning strategies
Languages & Runtimes
Proficiency in one or more of: Python, Java, Node.js, or C# / .NET for Lambda, ECS/EKS service, and Kafka consumer development
Leadership Skills:
Strong technical leadership with the ability to set direction, influence stakeholders, and build consensus across engineering and business teams.
Excellent problem-solving skills with a structured, pattern-oriented approach to complex integration challenges.
Demonstrated ability to manage competing priorities across multiple concurrent workstreams.
We would love to have you join our team! ECCO Select is committed to hiring and retaining a diverse workforce. ECCO Select s policy is to provide equal opportunity to all people without regard to race, color, religion, national origin, ancestry, marital status, veteran status, age, disability, pregnancy, genetic information, citizenship status, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or any other legally protected category.
Equal Employment Opportunity is The Law
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