I don't know if Data would be considered mundane by SW standards, he has freakish strength and has a very good understanding of combat and leadership, you only need to look at Lore to see how that can be misused. The droid army may would had benefited from more outside the box thinking then just have battle armies and tactics that are more akin to the 18th century fighting of Europe.
They're not present in the movies, but they did mention "Human Replica Droids" in the EU - they're basically what Data is, only completely passable for human. Regardless, you have to keep in mind that in Star Wars, droids are old technology - they are considered mere tools, and purposely not given very much autonomy due to either fear of them rebelling or to cultural taboo. The Trade Federation, for instance, specifically implemented the system of requiring droid control ships specifically so said droids could never turn against them.
Other then the odd moment like the death star, there wasn't much to say that the technology by the empire on the whole was vastly on a higher level then standard star trek like the federation. Its similar while it can be said that the empire would have the resources to make larger and more durable ships, the other side would say that the likes of voyager has weaponary from its final episode that bypassed shielding outright. Yet both elements have the means to communicate across a galactic field and still have triggers on their guns and can travel great distances. If the events of 'All good things' do happen then the federation will have warp 10 and even faster speed, or mastered transwarp and slipstream technology altogether. Voyager had a taste of slipstream and transwarp, so the federation or its rivals do have the capability to understand galactic travel, but as you rightly said infrastructure is key and the federation simply doesn't have the resources to be at the scale of the empire.
Let's just take a step back here for a moment - civilian cross-galactic travel is commonplace in SW - even leaving the Sol system in ST requires booking passage aboard a state-run transport. The Empire also built both Death Stars in secret - we're talking thousands or millions worth of starship material here. SW is a galaxy in which FTL travel is millennia-old. There aren't any unmapped anomalies to worry about bumping into, and they express disbelief if a planet isn't in their database. You have a setting where a single kid with no formal training can traverse the galaxy on his own, compared to one where you need a crew of highly trained personnel to cross part of one quadrant of their galaxy, and even then, they're running up against known space-wedgies or worrying that their own ship will blow them up.
I still argue though that the two are similar in their scientific knowledge it's just the two have very different routes but neither of the two has something that is revolutionary in their understanding, so I don't think the Empire would fare any better in understanding Icondian technology. That doesn't mean the empire can't beat the Iconians (they were beaten afterall despite being able to teleport a dyson sphere from another galaxy) as we don't have a full extent of their ability to fight effectively, but I just don't see the empire being able to reverse engineer Icondian technology. Maybe in the SW comics they might have something to counter/limit the scale of the Icondian technology, based on sidious ability to 'forsee' (or was that just arrogance?) or from the sith lord himself? An advanced early warning system based on the force to counter would level the playing field.
If the combined forces of the Alpha quadrant can stave off being conquered by the Iconians, then the Empire can still easily overcome their advantages via brute force. The Empire can afford to dispatch thousands of probe droids to survey even outlying systems like Hoth for Rebel activity, so setting up a wide enough sensor net to detect and quickly move in on any Iconian incursions should be relatively easy. And that's before accounting for things like the Empire's superior ground forces. Again, if the Alpha quadrant forces can stand up to the Iconians at all, then the Empire should make easy work of them.