1. Role overview
You design how a system will fit a client's stack before anybody builds it: what it reads, what it writes, where a person approves, and what it is never allowed to touch.
Most of the work is constraint. Security, residency, the existing systems of record and the way a team already works decide more of the design than the model does.
You produce the blueprint the client signs, and you stay close enough to the build to be accountable for it.
2. Key Responsibilities
Map the client's systems of record, and where the work actually crosses them
Design the integration surface, and the failure behaviour, before the build
Write the blueprint: process, systems, controls, approvals and owners
Take the design through the client's security and architecture review
Decide what the system handles and what stays with a person
Set the data boundaries: what is read in place, and what never leaves
Review the build against the design, and say when it has drifted
3. Qualifications
You have designed integrations across enterprise systems that were already in production.
Comfortable in a security review, and able to answer for your own design.
Understanding of identity, access, residency, and how they constrain a build.
You write designs engineers can build from and clients can approve.
Experience of at least one heavily regulated environment.
You know when the simpler system is the right answer.
Comfortable being the person who says a design is not ready.
Willing to travel to a client when the work needs it.
4. The work
Understand the client's process before choosing the technology.
Build systems for real operational work.
Work with the people who know the process.
Learn from the behaviour of systems in production.
Choose tools to fit the client's platforms and controls.
Document decisions so other engineers can follow the work.
Connect engineering decisions to the work the system must carry.
Keep the client's people involved as the system evolves.
