APIs, Networking & Integration Topics
API design, management, and integration patterns including REST, GraphQL, and other protocols. Covers API contract design, versioning strategies, error handling, idempotency, deprecation planning, and SDK/integration frameworks. Includes system-to-system integration, webhook patterns, and integration platform considerations. Excludes network infrastructure and network-layer protocols (see Network Architecture under Cloud & Infrastructure or a dedicated networking category if needed).
Human Resources Systems and Integration
Comprehensive knowledge of human resources technology and how it supports and scales people operations. Topics include human resources information systems and core human resources platforms, applicant tracking systems, payroll platforms and benefits administration, learning management systems, performance and succession tools, and other workforce technology. Candidates should be able to discuss system selection and vendor evaluation, solution architecture and integration approaches with payroll, accounting, and enterprise systems, data migration strategies, master data management for employee records, data governance, security and privacy compliance for personnel data, and common implementation and integration challenges. Practical skills include configuration, troubleshooting, reporting and analytics for workforce planning, measuring and driving user adoption, designing training and change management plans, and collaborating with human resources business partners, human resources operations, and information technology teams to maintain data integrity and operational reliability. The topic also covers expectations at different seniority levels such as administrator, implementation lead, and solution architect, and how human resources technology enables repeatable and scalable people processes.
Enterprise Integration and Automation
Covers end to end design, architecture, implementation, and operational management of integrating software systems across an enterprise. Candidates should be able to design integration architectures that connect products with enterprise technology stacks such as customer relationship management systems, enterprise resource planning systems, data warehouses, and cloud platforms. Key topics include common integration patterns and anti patterns such as point to point, hub and spoke, enterprise service bus, publish subscribe and event driven architecture, and batch based extract transform load pipelines; interface choices including application programming interfaces, messaging, streaming and batch data exchanges; and trade offs in latency, throughput, delivery semantics and complexity. Data topics include data flow mapping, data quality, reconciliation, master data management, schema evolution, privacy and data governance. Strategy and operational concerns include migration and cutover planning, testing and rollback strategies, monitoring and observability of data flows and dependencies, service level agreement and capacity planning, performance and scalability under load, and incident response. Engineering details include version and contract management for interfaces, dependency and compatibility management, idempotency and error handling strategies, reconciliation and eventual consistency patterns, and practical troubleshooting for driver, protocol and component incompatibilities. Automation and workflow topics cover orchestration, choreography, workflow automation to reduce manual work, vendor selection and governance, and the trade offs between customization and configuration. Candidates should be able to identify integration risks, propose architecture and operational mitigations, and reason about testing, monitoring, security, maintainability and continuous improvement for integrated systems.