What is the MuleSoft Certified Integration Architect - Level 1 Certification?

Customers today expect businesses to provide a smooth experience that integrates devices, applications, and data across various platforms, such as SaaS, legacy systems, and Software.

To achieve this, businesses must be agile and build an effective application network that can handle different projects, security, productivity, and access management.

The MuleSoft certification program enables professionals and enterprises to quickly learn how to create and manage such an application network.

MuleSoft Certified Integration Architect – Level 1 certification is designed for candidates with extensive experience working as architects. They are responsible for making technology decisions for their organization and establishing best practices. Candidates with at least 3 years of experience in Mule (3.x or 4.x) development and architecture are eligible for this certification.

What MuleSoft is all about?

Mulesoft is a software company that offers integration platform as a service (PaaS) solutions. It enables organizations to connect applications, data, and devices with an API-led approach and integration tools. Its flagship product, Anypoint Platform, is an API-led integration platform that allows organizations to securely and rapidly integrate different applications, data, and devices for their business operations.

The Anypoint Platform comprises an API gateway, runtime, and development tools. It helps organizations design, build, deploy, and manage API-led architectures. The platform offers various services for creating, securing, and managing APIs and integration solutions.

These services include API design, API management, API gateway, API security, API monitoring, API analytics, and API lifecycle management. The platform also provides a range of tools for developers, such as connectors, data mapping, and data transformation.

What is MuleSoft certification?

MuleSoft is a company that enables organizations from various industry sectors to integrate their devices, applications, and data across platforms smoothly. This helps enterprises seeking transformation find suitable integration platforms that can scale quickly and flexibly across cloud and on-premise legacy systems.

The MuleSoft certification program was initiated to ensure that professionals and enterprises had a common understanding of the training across various learning paths, such as integration architect, platform architect, developer, and operations. MuleSoft-certified professionals are in high demand in today’s digital economy, as they can help enterprises integrate their services across various platforms quickly.

What is the MuleSoft Certified Integration Architect - Level 1 Certification?

A MuleSoft Certified Integration Architect is expected to lead and oversee an organization’s Anypoint Platform implementation and ensure the integration solutions' technical quality, governance (compliance), and operationalization.

The MCIA - Level 1 exam verifies that an architect has the knowledge and skills to collaborate with technical and non-technical stakeholders and convert functional and non-functional requirements into integration interfaces and implementations.

MuleSoft Certified Integration Architect candidates should be able to:

• Design integration solutions at a high level and guide implementation teams on selecting Mule components and patterns for detailed design and implementation.
• Choose the deployment approach and configuration of Anypoint Platform based on any available deployment options (MuleSoft-hosted or customer-hosted control plane and runtime plane).
• Develop Mule applications for any of the available deployment options of the Anypoint Platform runtime plane.
• Follow standard development methods that cover the entire development lifecycle (project preparation, analysis, design, development, testing, deployment, and support) to ensure solution quality.
• Provide technical guidance on performance, scalability, reliability, monitoring, and other operational aspects of integration solutions on the Anypoint Platform.
• Create reusable assets, components, standards, frameworks, and processes that enable and streamline API and integration projects.

Exam format

Format: Multiple-choice, closed book, proctored, online Length: 60 questions Duration: 120 minutes (2 hours) Pass score: 70% Language: English Cost: $400

What is the validity of the MuleSoft Integration Architect certification?

The validity of the MuleSoft Certified Integration Architect - Level 1 certification is two years from the date of passing the exam. After this date, you can renew the certification by taking the MuleSoft Certified Integration Architect – Level 1 MAINTENANCE exam.

What topics are covered in the MuleSoft Architect certification?

The MuleSoft Integration Architect certification exam validates that you can perform the following tasks.

Initiating integration solutions on the Anypoint Platform

Summarize the fundamental value proposition of MuleSoft Catalyst and Catalyst Knowledge Hub Differentiate between functional and non-functional requirements for integration solutions Select features of Anypoint Platform for designing and managing web and event-driven APIs Select deployment options of the Anypoint Platform control plane and runtime plane

Designing for the runtime plane technology architecture

• Analyze the mode of operation of a Mule runtime cluster that differentiates it from other deployment options.
• Design integration solutions deployed to CloudHub to address specific requirements using CloudHub's network features.
• Choose Mule runtime domains and domain-shared configuration only for those requirements that benefit from their capabilities.
• Design Mule applications making effective use of the implications of the Mule 4 class loader isolation of Mule modules
• Describe the characteristics and implications of the Mule 4 reactive event processing model.

Designing architecture using integration paradigms

• Create high-level integration architectures using API-led Connectivity
• Create high-level integration architectures using web APIs and HTTP
• Create high-level integration architectures using event-driven APIs and message brokers
• Design Mule applications and integration solutions using common messaging patterns and technologies

Designing and developing Mule applications

• Select among available options for setting Mule application properties
• Select and use fundamental features available to all Mule applications
• Design Mule applications using core routers available to all Mule applications
• Describe the fundamental features of the Salesforce connector
• Design Mule applications using common features of core connectors
• Select and use the available sources of metadata in the Transform Message component
• Design Mule applications and integration solutions using a Common/Canonical Data Model
• Correctly apply methods for validating data in Mule applications

Designing automated tests for Mule applications

• Design unit test suites using MUnit and Studio's related features
• Identify test requirements and scenarios that are best addressed using integration testing or performance testing

Designing integration solutions to meet persistence requirements

• Design Mule applications using VM queues and the Anypoint VM connector in all deployment options
• Design Mule applications using Object Stores, the OS connector, and OS services in all deployment options
• Design Mule applications and integration solutions using stateful components that may be configured with an Object Store

Designing integration solutions to meet reliability requirements

• Where appropriate and beneficial, select alternatives to traditional transactions (local or XA).
• Recognize the purpose and characteristics of Until Successful scope, reconnection strategies, and redelivery policies.
• Differentiate between disaster recovery and high availability and the basic approaches to achieving either in all deployment options.
• Design Mule applications and integration solutions using local and XA transactions for all Mule connectors that support them

Designing integration solutions to meet performance requirements

• Design Mule applications and integration solutions to meet performance and capacity goals
• Design Mule applications using available streaming features in Mule
• Design Mule applications to process large sequences/streams of messages

Designing integration solutions to meet security requirements

• Design secure access to the Anypoint Platform control plane and APIs
• Design secure edge access using Anypoint Security
• Analyze and counteract potential security vulnerabilities of Mule applications
• Recognize the audit logging capabilities of the Anypoint Platform

Applying DevOps practices and operating integration solutions

• Create the high-level design of CI/CD pipelines for Mule applications using MuleSoft-provided Maven plugins
• Identify the features and characteristics for automating interactions with the Anypoint Platform
• Design the logging configurations and options of Mule applications in all deployment options
• Identify the features and characteristics of Anypoint Monitoring in all deployment options

What are the responsibilities of an enterprise architect?

One of the key tools for governance is to establish and promote guiding principles that influence the design of cloud, application, data, platform, and security solutions that constitute the enterprise architecture as a whole.

An enterprise architect, in general, performs the following tasks:

• Creating strategies, principles, and roadmaps that align with business strategies and objectives.
• Budget, project, and program governance are managed according to those strategies, principles, and roadmaps.
• Innovating, selecting future products and tech.

How the enterprise architect contributes to business success

In the past, when the mainframe was the only solution for enterprise computing, there was one system next to warehouses of paper forms, and the architecture and interoperability of the mainframe code with itself and a few other systems was important.

Today, the technology landscape has changed dramatically. Physical servers were replaced by virtualization, and virtualization was replaced by cloud and infrastructure-as-code. Relational and graph databases were supplemented by columnar in-memory databases; COBOL was replaced by C, and C was replaced by Java; data warehouses were replaced by big data and data lakes; classic SQL was supplemented by noSQL and Python. Instead of harmonizing and integrating innovative technology, it increased complexity and hindered innovation in the overall technology landscape.

The technology landscape needs to be optimized for speed and agility; otherwise, shifting consumer expectations for seamless connected experiences will add complexity, cost, and delay. Moreover, businesses must comply with growing regulations (such as GDPR or AML) that require simplification.

To address this problem, the enterprise architecture needs to be organized into layers and layer the older with, the newer to ensure these layers can easily couple, decouple, co-exist, and co-operate using standardized interfaces like MuleSoft’s lightweight APIs.

The enterprise architect’s role is to optimize the right parts of the tech estate at the right time to achieve the fiscal and business objectives and make them work together as a cohesive whole.

This layering approach is necessary because it is more cost-effective and faster, and easier than rebuilding these systems from scratch.

At the same time, the business and customers depend on them for daily operations. The business value of the enterprise architect role is to overcome the big challenges of IT change in complex operating and trading environments.

How much do MuleSoft Certified Professionals earn?

MuleSoft Certified Developers and MuleSoft Certified Architects are in high demand, and this trend will continue for the foreseeable future. As enterprises must integrate various applications, devices, and data across platforms, the workforce must be agile and efficient in delivering such integration projects. With limited supply, professionals who take MuleSoft training courses and obtain relevant MuleSoft credentials will have a competitive edge in their career path.

The average salary range for certified MuleSoft professionals in the USA is USD 77,000 to USD 154,000.

The bottom line

MuleSoft certification is a worthwhile investment for individuals and organizations who want to prove their competence and skills in MuleSoft technology. I appreciate your time and attention to read the above post. I hope you found it helpful. If you have any questions, please use the chat options below to learn more about the MuleSoft Certified Integration Architect certification.