This role is responsible for transitioning legacy synchronous/batch integration patterns into scalable, real-time event streams, enforcing governance, and automating deployment pipelines across hybrid-cloud infrastructure.

The Enterprise Integration Specialist will lead the design, implementation, and governance of an enterprise-grade Event-Driven Architecture (EDA) utilizing the Confluent Kafka Event Streaming Platform within an IBM environment (IBM Cloud Pak for Integration, IBM Event Streams, Red Hat OpenShift, IBM App Connect / webMethods, and IBM MQ).

Requirements

Professional Experience

• Total Experience: 5+ years in Enterprise Integration, Middleware, or API Architecture.
• IBM Integration Platforms: 3+ years of hands-on experience designing and running integration flows on IBM App Connect Enterprise (ACE / IIB) OR IBM webMethods Integration (webMethods Integration Server, Enterprise Gateway, or webMethods.io).
• Event Streaming: 3+ years of hands-on experience building streaming pipelines with Confluent Kafka or Apache Kafka.
• Modernization Track Record: Proven background in refactoring legacy synchronous patterns (SOAP, RPC, File Batch, IBM MQ) into asynchronous event-driven flows using IBM integration tools connected to Kafka.

2. Core Technical Requirements

A. IBM Integration Capabilities (App Connect or webMethods)

• Deep experience authoring, deploying, and maintaining integrations using IBM App Connect (ESQL, Java, Compute nodes, REST/SOAP API flows) OR IBM webMethods (IS Flow Services, Java Services, Designer, webMethods.io).
• Ability to map complex data formats (JSON, XML, Copybooks, Flat Files) into enterprise canonical models.
• Experience leveraging native IBM nodes/adapters to produce and consume directly to/from Apache Kafka / Confluent topics.

B. Confluent Kafka & Streaming Capabilities

• Strong grasp of Kafka architecture: Topic partitioning, Producer/Consumer tuning, Consumer Groups, and Offset Management.
• Hands-on implementation of Confluent Schema Registry (Avro/Protobuf) for enterprise data governance and backward/forward schema compatibility.
• Experience with Kafka Connect framework for streaming data between databases, IBM MQ, and Kafka topics.
• Knowledge of stream transformation using Kafka Streams or ksqlDB.

C. Infrastructure, DevOps & Security

• Deployment experience on Red Hat OpenShift, Kubernetes, or IBM Cloud Pak for Integration (CP4I).
• Experience automating integration deployments using CI/CD pipelines (Jenkins, GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, ArgoCD) and Terraform/Ansible.
• Solid understanding of security protocols across hybrid clouds: mTLS, SASL/SCRAM, OAuth2, API Key Management, and RBAC/ACLs.