Lead Middleware Engineer Jobs in Illinois (NOW HIRING)

Heidrick & Struggles is the world's foremost advisor on executive leadership, driving superior client performance through premier human capital leadership advisory services. For more than 70 years, we've delivered value for our clients by leveraging unrivaled expertise to help organizations discover and enable outstanding leaders and teams. Learn more at www.heidrick.com
Job Description:
Who We Are:
Heidrick & Struggles is a premier provider of global leadership advisory and on-demand talent solutions, serving the senior-level talent and consulting needs of the world's top organizations. In our role as trusted leadership advisors, we partner with our clients to develop future-ready leaders and organizations, bringing together our services and offerings in executive search, diversity and inclusion, leadership assessment and development, organization and team acceleration, culture shaping and on-demand, independent talent solutions. Heidrick & Struggles pioneered the profession of executive search more than 70 years ago. Today, the firm provides integrated talent and human capital solutions to help our clients change the world, one leadership team at a time.®
Additional information on the firm can be found at www.heidrick.com.
The Role:
The Senior Manager, API & Middleware Engineering will lead API and middleware engineering as a strategic enterprise platform capability supporting MuleSoft development, enterprise integrations, API-managed services, reusable connectivity patterns, AI-enabled services, and emerging agent/MCP integration frameworks. This role owns the delivery, operational maturity, reliability, scalability, and engineering effectiveness of the enterprise middleware platform, enabling secure and reusable connectivity across core enterprise systems, data platforms, APIs, and AI-enabled workflows.
The role partners with Enterprise Architecture and engineering teams to operationalize practical, enablement-based governance that improves consistency without creating delivery bottlenecks. This position manages a blended team of internal employees, external contractors, and vendor partners, while owning middleware delivery, API standards, integration support, backlog management, technical governance, and production readiness.
The Senior Manager partners across Application and Platform Engineering, Application Platform Services, Quality Engineering, Architecture, Security, Data, AI, Infrastructure, Product, PMO, and vendor teams. This role operates as a player-coach leader, balancing strategic platform ownership, team leadership, operational accountability, and hands-on technical engagement across middleware and enterprise integration initiatives.
Responsibilities:
• Lead MuleSoft engineering delivery, middleware support, integration design, API implementation, and production troubleshooting across enterprise integration initiatives.
• Own the middleware platform operating model, delivery governance, engineering standards, technical backlog, sprint capacity, run/change balance, and operational maturity.
• Provide hands-on technical leadership and serve as a senior escalation point for solution design, design reviews, implementation oversight, troubleshooting, and support for complex enterprise integrations.
• Partner with Product Owners, PMO, Enterprise Architecture, Security, Data, AI, Infrastructure, Quality Engineering, DevOps, and application teams to align priorities, dependencies, risks, roadmap milestones, standards, and delivery execution.
• Lead a blended team of internal employees, contractors, and vendor partners, including work allocation, coaching, performance oversight, vendor coordination, delivery quality, and accountability against middleware engineering priorities.
• Define, implement, and evolve reusable integration patterns, shared services, API standards, connectors, lifecycle practices, documentation expectations, and service-level expectations to improve scalability, reuse, reliability, and consistency.
• Support a MuleSoft C4E-style enablement model by publishing reusable integration assets, API standards, connector patterns, templates, and documentation that delivery teams can discover and consume.
• Own and evolve the enterprise API catalog, driving API reuse, lifecycle governance, service reliability, security, observability, maintainability, catalog consumption, and developer adoption.
• Own middleware platform reliability, observability, resiliency, operational readiness, production support, service health monitoring, incident visibility, technical debt management, and modernization opportunities.
• Own vendor delivery accountability across middleware engineering and integration services, including delivery quality, operational readiness, technical standards, documentation quality, scalability, and production support expectations.
• Lead middleware enablement for AI endpoint integrations, agent-based workflows, MCP connectivity, and reusable API exposure supporting enterprise AI platforms and emerging LLM-enabled solutions.
• Collaborate with Application Platform Services and DevOps on release coordination, CI/CD, environments, deployment practices, and observability.
• Partner with Quality Engineering on API testing, regression readiness, performance testing, and release confidence.
• Communicate risks, dependencies, vendor performance, resource capacity, and delivery tradeoffs to stakeholders.
Required Qualifications:
• Bachelor's degree.
• 8+ years of relevant experience.
• Strong experience designing, building, and supporting enterprise integrations using MuleSoft Anypoint Platform.
• Experience leading middleware, integration, API, platform engineering, or application development teams.
• Experience managing blended teams of internal employees, external contractors, and vendor partners.
• Strong hands-on technical experience designing and implementing enterprise integrations, APIs, middleware services, and reusable connectivity patterns.
• Ability to balance strategic platform leadership with hands-on technical contribution and engineering problem-solving.
• Strong vendor management skills, including delivery oversight, quality control, performance management, and standards enforcement.
• Strong knowledge of REST APIs, API lifecycle management, API gateways, integration patterns, service contracts, and reusable connector design.
• Experience designing scalable enterprise integration platforms emphasizing reusable services, API governance, operational resiliency, and platform engineering best practices.
• Experience supporting AI-enabled integrations, agent-based workflows, enterprise service orchestration, or emerging LLM connectivity patterns.
• Experience establishing operational governance, engineering standards, and scalable delivery practices across distributed engineering and vendor teams.
• Experience with production support, incident response, observability, monitoring, and operational readiness.
• Ability to manage technical backlogs, sprint capacity, priorities, estimates, solution designs, and implementation quality.
• Strong communication and collaboration skills across architecture, security, infrastructure, application engineering, product, PMO, and QA teams.
Preferred Qualifications:
• MuleSoft certifications, such as MuleSoft Certified Developer or MuleSoft Certified Platform Architect.
• Experience with API catalogs, developer portals, API governance, API security, and service-level management.
• Experience with Salesforce, CRM, ATS, marketing technology, CLM, or other enterprise platforms.
• Experience with CI/CD, DevOps, automated deployments, release governance, API testing, and performance testing.
• Experience with AI-enabled enterprise integrations, agentic workflows, MCP concepts, enterprise AI orchestration patterns, or secure API enablement for LLM-based platforms.
• Experience with event-driven architecture, asynchronous integrations, enterprise messaging, or modern API platform patterns.
Pay Range Guidelines for this Position:
The salary range for this position is 170000 USD to 182000 USD. Compensation is based on several factors including but not limited to education, work experience and skills. In addition to your salary, Heidrick & Struggles offers discretionary bonuses (subject to eligibility requirements) and a comprehensive benefits package including: medical, dental, vision, disability leave, parental leave, paid time off and 401k contribution (all benefits are subject to eligibility requirements). Note: we have a location based compensation structure; there may be a different range for candidates in other locations.
Heidrick & Struggles is an equal opportunity employer committed to hiring qualified protected veterans and individuals with disabilities. All qualified applicants will be considered for employment without regard to race, color, religion, creed, age, sex, national origin, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, disability, marital status, veteran or military status, or citizenship status.