Senior Data Integration Architect — Real-Time, Cloud & Remote

About the Role We are seeking a highly specialized Senior Data Integration Engineer to design, build, and maintain robust, scalable integrations across a complex enterprise ecosystem. This role focuses on enabling seamless system-to-system data flows, ensuring high availability, and providing real-time access to data across legacy, cloud, and SaaS platforms.

You will act as a subject matter expert in enterprise data movement and virtualization, bridging the gap between disparate technologies while ensuring integration reliability, governance, and performance at scale.

Key Responsibilities

• Integration Architecture & Design

Design and implement complex enterprise integration patterns, including API-led connectivity, event-driven architectures, and batch ETL

• Architect scalable, secure, and resilient system-to-system data flows across heterogeneous environments
• Develop reusable integration frameworks and enforce enterprise integration standards
• Collaborate with enterprise architects and business stakeholders to align integrations with strategic objectives

• Pipeline Development & Real-Time Data Movement

Build and maintain high-throughput ETL/ELT pipelines using Qlik Talend (Cloud or On-Premise)

• Implement and optimize log-based Change Data Capture (CDC) and low-latency replication using Qlik Replicate
• Support zero-downtime migrations and real-time streaming integrations
• Perform complex data mapping, transformation, validation, and reconciliation across source and target systems
• Optimize performance and ensure scalability of integration pipelines

• Data Virtualization & System Connectivity

Leverage Denodo (or similar platforms) to create enterprise data virtualization layers for real-time data access without physical movement

• Design and implement semantic layers and virtual data services
• Integrate diverse platforms including on-premise databases, legacy mainframes, cloud data warehouses, and SaaS applications (e.g., Salesforce, Workday, SAP)
• Design and consume REST and SOAP APIs and manage integrations across multiple protocols (SFTP, JDBC, messaging queues)

• Reliability, Governance & Leadership

Implement robust error handling, monitoring, logging, and alerting mechanisms

• Ensure data integrity, security, and high availability of integration services
• Enforce governance standards including data lineage, metadata management, and compliance controls
• Provide technical leadership, define coding standards, and promote best practices in integration design
• Mentor junior engineers and support continuous improvement within integration teams

Requirements & Qualifications

Must-Have Skills & Experience:

• 6+ years of professional experience in data integration, ETL development, middleware administration, or enterprise application integration
• Deep, hands-on expertise with Qlik Talend (Cloud or On-Premise) for designing complex workflows and transformations
• Proven experience configuring and tuning Qlik Replicate for log-based CDC and real-time replication across heterogeneous systems
• Strong experience with Denodo (or similar enterprise data virtualization platforms)
• Expert-level SQL skills with advanced data mapping, transformation, and validation capabilities
• Strong understanding of enterprise integration patterns including batch processing, messaging, and API-led connectivity
• Experience ensuring high availability, monitoring, and operational stability of integration services

Highly Desirable Skills:

• Experience with cloud integration services such as AWS Glue, Azure Data Factory, or Google Cloud Dataflow
• Experience designing RESTful APIs and working with API gateways (Apigee, MuleSoft, Kong)
• Familiarity with messaging and streaming platforms such as Kafka, RabbitMQ, or IBM MQ
• Proficiency in scripting languages (Python, Shell) for automation and enhancement of integrations
• Understanding of data governance principles, data lineage, and metadata management
• Experience implementing CI/CD pipelines for integration deployments using Git, Jenkins, or Azure DevOps

Education

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Software Engineering, or related field

Additional Information

• Employment Type: Full-time

• Salary: Market Related/Negotiable

• Location Options: Johannesburg / Cape Town / Remote

• Must be located in South Africa or have a valid work permit for South Africa