No AI without APIs.

Kong Inc., a leading developer of API and AI connectivity technologies, is building the connectivity layer for AI. Trusted by the Fortune 500 and AI-native startups alike, Kong’s unified API and AI platform enables organizations to secure, manage, accelerate, govern, and monetize the flow of intelligence across APIs and AI traffic — on any model, any cloud.

Kong

If you don’t think you meet all of the criteria below but are still interested in the job, please apply.  Nobody checks every box - we’re looking for candidates that are particularly strong in a few areas, and have some interest and capabilities in others.

If you don’t think you meet all of the criteria below but are still interested in the job, please apply. Nobody checks every box - we’re looking for candidates that are particularly strong in a few areas, and have some interest and capabilities in others.

, you’ll join the global Platform SRE team responsible for 

building, operating, and scaling Kong’s multi-region SaaS platform

 that powers the world’s API connectivity.

You’ll design, automate, and run production systems serving thousands of customers across AWS, GCP, and Azure. You’ll work on everything from 

, ensuring the reliability, scalability, and security of Kong’s SaaS offerings.

This is a hands-on role ideal for engineers who thrive on 

, automating operations, and continuously improving performance, resilience, and deployment pipelines.

, ensuring reliability, availability, and performance across regions and clouds.

 — for high availability and low latency.

 environments supporting hybrid and distributed architectures.

 to automate service delivery and ensure consistent infrastructure changes.

Collaborate closely with development and security teams to ensure smooth operation of 

 in compliance with reliability, security, and regulatory standards.

 and drive continuous improvement of operational playbooks and postmortem practices.

 that improve elasticity, reliability, and cost-efficiency across the SaaS platform.

 at enterprise scale (multi-region, multi-tenant, secure environments).

, including debugging cluster/networking issues and designing for fault tolerance and scalability.

Proficiency in one or more programming languages (

 and observability platforms (Datadog, Prometheus, Grafana).

, or similar service connectivity technologies.

 (PrivateLink, Transit Gateway, VPC Peering, Firewalls), 

Kong Inc., a leading developer of API and AI connectivity technologies, is building the infrastructure that powers the agentic era. Trusted by the Fortune 500 and startups alike, Kong's unified API and AI platform, Kong Konnect, enables organizations to secure, manage, accelerate, govern, and monetize the flow of intelligence across APIs and AI models. For more information, visit 

Education Requirement

Experience Requirement

Work Conditions

Kong is seeking a Site Reliability Engineer 2 to join their global Platform SRE team. The role involves building and scaling a multi-region SaaS platform using Kubernetes, Terraform, and ArgoCD across AWS, GCP, and Azure. Key responsibilities include optimizing data layers and ensuring high availability for API connectivity services.

Site Reliability Engineer 2

Full Time

Kong is building the future of API and AI infrastructure. Our platform powers connectivity for thousands of organizations globally across APIs, microservices, Kubernetes and now AI agents and LLM-driven applications.

We’re looking for a Senior Software Engineer to join Kong’s Office of the CTO team and work on special, high-impact projects that influence the direction of our platform and engineering strategy. The Office of the CTO (OCTO) is where Kong’s most ambitious and exploratory engineering work happens, new platforms, foundational systems and high-impact technical bets that shape the company’s future.

You’ll work on everything from distributed database provisioning and durable workflow orchestration to LLM fine-tuning and infrastructure for our AI Builder capabilities, helping define a new foundation for how developers build and run AI-driven systems at scale.

This is a rare opportunity to shape a greenfield AI platform from the ground up, with direct input into architecture, tooling, and developer experience.

This is a role for engineers who enjoy deep technical challenges, ambiguity, and building systems that matter.

Design and build highly scalable distributed backend systems

Develop core services in Golang, with a focus on performance and reliability

Work with PostgreSQL and Redis to build robust, data-intensive systems

Architect systems that operate across microservices, networking layers, and cloud platforms

Collaborate closely with the CTO and senior engineers on strategic technical initiatives

Prototype and productionize new platform capabilities and internal tooling

Influence engineering direction and technical standards across Kong

Experience designing and operating distributed systems at scale

Solid experience with PostgreSQL and Redis in production environments

Experience building backend systems with high availability, scalability, and reliability

Strong systems thinking, debugging, and performance optimization skills

Experience with Kubernetes, networking, or API gateways

Experience with cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, Azure)

Contributions to open source or internal platform tooling

Experience working on platform, infra, or developer tooling products

Kong is hiring a Senior Software Engineer for the Office of the CTO to develop high-impact AI and API infrastructure. The role focuses on building scalable distributed backend systems using Golang, PostgreSQL, and Redis to power AI agents and LLM-driven applications.

Senior Software Engineer - Golang

Equity / Stock Options

Bonus


Kong is building the future of API management for developers. We’re a fast-growing, well-funded company with happy customers and motivated employees. Insomnia, acquired in 2019, is a full-lifecycle API development platform that has quickly become an integral part of Kong’s product portfolio.
As a Staff Software Engineer on the Konnect team at Kong, you’ll architect Kong Identity's multi-tenant identity platform supporting complex organizational hierarchies, cross-tenant isolation, and enterprise-grade security controls.

Design and implement advanced token management systems, including refresh token rotation, proof-of-possession tokens, and custom token introspection with real-time revocation capabilities.

Lead development of Kong Identity's extensible claims engine supporting dynamic attribute resolution, contextual claim injection, and complex business logic evaluation at token issuance.

Architect global identity infrastructure with edge optimization, intelligent token caching, and cross-region replication strategies for sub-millisecond authentication latency worldwide.

Design sophisticated rate limiting, anomaly detection, and fraud prevention systems to protect against credential stuffing, token abuse, and distributed attacks.

Build enterprise identity federation capabilities, including SAML bridge patterns, external IdP chaining, and custom protocol adapters for legacy system integration.

Lead technical strategy for Kong Identity's developer experience, including SDKs, webhooks, audit logging, and real-time analytics dashboards for token lifecycle visibility.

Architect advanced client management systems supporting dynamic client registration, automated credential rotation, and programmatic policy enforcement.

Design Kong Identity's plugin architecture enables custom grant flows, protocol extensions, and third-party integrations while maintaining security boundaries.

Drive implementation of compliance frameworks (SOC 2, FedRAMP, GDPR), including comprehensive audit trails, data residency controls, and privacy-preserving token designs.

Lead technical initiatives for Kong Identity's integration with observability platforms, supporting distributed tracing, metrics collection, and security event correlation.

Mentor engineering teams on advanced identity concepts including zero-trust architectures, workload identity, and service mesh integration patterns.

7+ years of experience building production identity platforms at leading identity providers or enterprise software companies, with proven track record of handling millions of authentication requests daily.

Deep expertise in advanced OAuth 2.0 extensions (PKCE, mTLS, JWT bearer assertions, token exchange), OpenID Connect profiles, and emerging standards like OAuth 2.1 and GNAP.

Proven experience architecting multi-tenant identity platforms with complex isolation requirements, tenant-specific configurations, and enterprise feature sets.

Strong background in cryptographic protocols including advanced JWT patterns, key rotation strategies, Hardware Security Module (HSM) integration, and post-quantum cryptography considerations.

Experience building identity platforms with sophisticated analytics, real-time monitoring, and security event detection capabilities at enterprise scale.

Expertise in global identity infrastructure including edge deployment strategies, geo-distributed token validation, and cross-region data consistency patterns.

Deep understanding of enterprise identity integration patterns including SAML federation, LDAP/AD bridges, SCIM provisioning, and custom protocol adapters.

Proven track record building developer-first identity platforms including comprehensive SDKs, webhook systems, and extensible API designs.

Experience with identity platform security including threat modeling, penetration testing coordination, and implementation of advanced attack prevention mechanisms.

Strong background in compliance and regulatory requirements for identity systems including audit trail design, data residency controls, and privacy engineering.

Experience building identity platforms supporting complex organizational structures, delegated administration, and fine-grained permission models.

Expertise in high-performance system design including horizontal scaling strategies, caching architectures, and latency optimization for identity operations.

Knowledge of service mesh identity patterns, workload identity bootstrapping, and integration with container orchestration platforms.

Experience with identity protocol extensions, custom grant flows, and building extensible identity platforms that support diverse use cases.

Proven ability to lead technical initiatives in complex, regulated environments while balancing innovation with security and compliance requirements.

Kong is hiring a Staff Software Engineer for the Konnect Core Platform to architect a multi-tenant identity platform. The role focuses on designing advanced token management, global identity infrastructure, and ensuring enterprise-grade security and compliance. Key requirements include deep expertise in OAuth 2.0, OIDC, and high-performance distributed systems.

$150K – $275K • Offers Equity • Offers Bonus

United States

Staff Software Engineer, Konnect Core Platform

Architect the future of machine-to-machine commerce as a founding member of a zero-to-one engineering squad. You will design, build, and scale the coordination fabric for agent-to-API and agent-to-agent transactions—spanning discovery, identity, billing, and settlement—built directly on top of Kong’s world-class runtime stack. Operating as an autonomous startup unit inside Kong, this team is responsible for lowering organizational drag, unlocking engineering velocity, and establishing Kong’s absolute leadership in the Agentic Era.

Architect and own the end-to-end full-stack surfaces of the marketplace loop, delivering high-performance tools, the underlying REST API substrate, and developer-facing onboarding systems.

Design the foundational agent-native user experience, creating robust Model Context Protocol (MCP) server capabilities, sandboxed test environments, and elegant CLI/SDK generation workflows.

Scale and protect the transaction infrastructure by building high-reliability pipelines for programmatic identity verification, usage attribution, granular metering, and complex multi-party settlement.

Drive cross-functional execution across Kong's engineering ecosystem, partnering with gateway runtime, security plugins, and global core teams to smoothly integrate marketplace features.

Lead architectural design reviews and champion a zero-technical-debt culture while proactively preventing scaling bottlenecks across distributed backend components.

Mentor engineers across the organization, multiplying the team's output by translating ambiguous product bets into highly defined, modular, and shippable technical milestones.

Own the technical lifecycle completely by writing crystal-clear engineering documentation and product specifications for every system you architect.

7+ years of experience engineering enterprise-grade production software with a proven capability to design, build, and support complex distributed systems from scratch.

Master-level expertise with a modern backend stack (such as Golang or similar systems languages) alongside deep architectural command of API infrastructure, Kubernetes, and cloud-native patterns.

Extensive hands-on experience developing autonomous agent applications, tool-calling systems, prompt loops, or systems designed explicitly for machine consumption.

Deep operational familiarity with multi-tenant architectures, usage-based metering pipelines, billing integration patterns, or secure data exchange layers.

Strong written communication and technical articulation skills, with an unwavering comfort operating within remote, globally distributed engineering environments (West Coast/Bay Area alignment preferred).

Timezone Match Required

Kong is seeking a Senior Staff Software Engineer to architect the Agent Marketplace, focusing on machine-to-machine commerce and agent-to-API transactions. The role involves designing high-performance tools and transaction infrastructure using Golang, Kubernetes, and AI agent frameworks within a remote-first environment.

Senior Staff Software Engineer - Agent Marketplace

 to redefine how we support, retain, and grow our expanding global commercial base. This is not a traditional "hands-on" account management role; we are looking for a digital-first architect who can blend human expertise with cutting-edge automation and AI.

You will lead a high-performing global team of 

 focusing on a "one-to-many" approach that ensures every customer—regardless of size—achieves world-class API connectivity and business value.

 Directly leading a global team of CSMs (and growing), fostering a culture of technical excellence and proactive customer advocacy within the Commercial segment.

 Design and execute a sophisticated "one-to-many" CS strategy. You will move away from manual intervention toward a scalable model that maintains high engagement through innovation.

 Build end-to-end digital customer lifecycles. You will automate onboarding and adoption paths to accelerate "Time to Value" (TTV) milestones for thousands of users.

 Act as a pioneer in the "new age" of CS. Identify and implement AI-driven tools and workflows to provide a personalized, high-touch feel at a massive scale.

 Shift the paradigm from manual support to a digital-first resource engine. Lead the creation of automated webinars, interactive documentation, and self-service hubs.

 Monitor the health of the commercial base to identify and bridge "Value Debt." You will ensure that customer technical utilization directly translates into realized business outcomes to prevent churn.

 Partner closely with the Renewals Manager to develop precise annual and quarterly forecasts, driving higher retention and expansion rates across the scaled segment.

 10+ years of professional experience in Customer Success, Account Management, or Professional Services within the SaaS or Infrastructure space.

 5+ years of experience leading and scaling high-performing teams, ideally in a global or remote environment.

 function is highly preferred. You should be comfortable discussing API management, microservices, or cloud infrastructure.

 A proven track record of building automated customer journeys and utilizing CS platforms (e.g., Gainsight, Totango, ChurnZero) to drive scale.

 Ability to translate complex data sets into actionable retention strategies and accurate financial forecasts.

Kong is seeking a Director of Global Scaled Customer Success to lead a global team and implement a digital-first, 'one-to-many' CS strategy. The role focuses on automating customer journeys, leveraging AI-driven tools, and managing the commercial base to drive retention and expansion. Key requirements include experience in SaaS, API management, and scaling high-performing remote teams.

Director, Global Scaled CS

Are you ready to sit at the epicenter of the API and AI connectivity revolution? As a Staff Solutions Engineer at Kong, you won’t just be selling a platform — you’ll be a trusted technical advisor helping the world’s most innovative enterprises architect secure, scalable API ecosystems while navigating the transition into the agentic AI era. Kong sits at the intersection of API management and AI connectivity, and you’ll be the person who makes that story real for customers.

Support field sales in helping customers understand the value of the Kong API and AI connectivity platform.

Conduct discovery conversations to understand customer requirements and map them to Kong solutions, from initial product reviews through to production.

Support POCs throughout the entire evaluation process, owning technical validation and stakeholder alignment.

Ensure customer satisfaction across your assigned set of accounts.

Collaborate with support, product, and engineering teams to advocate for customer needs.

Create technical documentation for DevOps, implementations, and services engagements.

Lead and support API Management and AI Goverance evaluations, including scoping API/AI use cases, LLM traffic management, and governance requirements.

Deliver demonstrations of Kong’s API & AI governance and agentic connectivity capabilities, including Model Context Protocol (MCP) governance, semantic caching, prompt guardrails, and shadow AI detection.

Run API & AI-focused Technical Feasibility Workshops (TFWs) to validate Kong’s fit for modern and/or AI/agentic architectures.

Own the technical strategy for complex, multi-stakeholder enterprise deals from qualification through close.

Mentor and coach junior SEs on technical skills, discovery methods, and deal strategy.

Drive thought leadership by authoring technical blogs, hosting webinars, speaking at industry events and conferences such as AWS re:Invent, Google Next, API & AI summit, and regional events

Influence product direction by synthesizing customer feedback and market signals into actionable input for the product team.

And any additional tasks required by manager.

7+ years of software engineering and/or solutions engineering experience at a SaaS, open source, or enterprise software company.

Proven track record owning complex, enterprise-level deals with multiple technical and executive stakeholders.

Experience mentoring or coaching other SEs or technical team members.

Experience with Docker, Kubernetes, and cloud-native platforms.

Experience with REST and GraphQL APIs, CI/CD pipelines, and API security patterns (OAuth2, OIDC, mTLS).

Hands-on experience with AI-assisted development tooling — Claude Code, GitHub Copilot, OpenAI Codex, or equivalent is required.

Working knowledge of AI/LLM architectures, including model routing, rate limiting, semantic caching, and prompt governance.

Familiarity with Model Context Protocol (MCP) and agentic AI patterns.

Solid understanding of cloud computing trends and open source business models.

Strong listener and communicator — you can confidently lead discussions with engineers, architects, and executives.

Enthusiasm for working in a high-profile, fast-paced environment at the intersection of API and AI connectivity.

Kong is seeking a Staff Solutions Engineer to serve as a technical advisor for enterprises architecting secure API ecosystems and AI connectivity. The role involves leading technical validations, conducting POCs, and implementing AI governance and agentic connectivity patterns using technologies like Kubernetes, REST APIs, and the Model Context Protocol (MCP).

$200K – $260K • Offers Equity • Offers Commission

Staff Solutions Engineer - New York

We are seeking a committed Enterprise Sales Executive with a successful background in sales and account management, ideally within open source or similar enterprise software environments. In this role, you will be a key driver of our growth strategy, directly impacting the stability and expansion of our recurring revenue. This position is ideal for a sales professional who has experience in landing new clients, retaining existing customers, and driving account expansion for early-stage enterprise products in a dynamic, entrepreneurial setting. 

At Kong, we offer 

, competitive benefits, and equity in a company with huge growth potential.

Develop and execute sales strategies to target enterprise customers, focusing on building and maintaining a robust pipeline that drives long-term growth.

Own the entire sales cycle, from prospecting and initial outreach to contract negotiations and closing deals, while consistently meeting or exceeding revenue targets.

Collaborate with internal teams, including product, marketing, and customer success, to ensure a seamless sales experience and alignment on customer needs.

Identify customer pain points and align our solutions to address these, delivering customized product demos and presentations tailored to their specific business needs.

Build and nurture relationships with C-level executives and key decision-makers within target accounts, establishing yourself as a trusted advisor and ensuring customer satisfaction and retention.

Lead account planning efforts by researching potential customers, understanding industry trends, and developing strategies to win new business and grow existing accounts.

Monitor and manage sales activities and results, accurately forecasting opportunities and keeping detailed records of interactions and progress in CRM systems.

Stay updated on industry trends, competitor offerings, and market changes to position our product effectively and maintain a competitive edge.

Contribute to business growth initiatives, providing feedback to product and marketing teams to influence product development and go-to-market strategies.

Represent Kong with professionalism, acting as a brand ambassador at industry events, conferences, and customer meetings.

7+ years of experience in enterprise sales (>5k employees), with a proven track record of closing complex deals in a SaaS, cloud, or enterprise software environment.

Demonstrated success in selling to large enterprises, particularly to senior-level executives and across multiple departments.

Strong consultative selling skills, with the ability to understand customer needs and present compelling solutions that drive business outcomes.

Excellent communication and negotiation skills, capable of managing high-stakes conversations and building lasting relationships with stakeholders.

A results-driven mindset, with a passion for meeting and exceeding sales goals and revenue targets.

Experience working with CRM platforms (e.g., Salesforce) and leveraging data to forecast accurately and track sales metrics.

Knowledge of open-source software, APIs, or infrastructure software is highly advantageous.

Ability to thrive in a fast-paced, entrepreneurial environment, taking ownership of your sales territory and adapting to changing market dynamics.

Analytical and strategic thinking, with a knack for identifying business growth opportunities and devising plans to capitalize on them.

Kong is seeking an Enterprise Account Executive for the Southeast region to drive growth and manage recurring revenue. The role involves owning the full sales cycle for API and AI connectivity technologies, targeting large enterprises. Key responsibilities include prospecting, C-level relationship building, and strategic account planning.

Enterprise Account Executive, Southeast

Kong's Managed Gateways is the fastest-growing product in the Kong portfolio, a SaaS offering with ARR growing multifold. As a Senior Site Reliability Engineer focused on Managed Gateways, you'll be instrumental in architecting and maintaining the resilient, scalable infrastructure that powers Kong's mission-critical managed services — and you'll be the technical face of that product for the enterprise customers who depend on it, directly ensuring the reliability and performance that lets them build the next generation of connected applications at global scale.

Cloud Gateways is a complex, multi-cloud problem — supported across AWS, GCP, and Azure — and our enterprise customers run large, often unique topologies. This role carries two equally deep engineering mandates: owning production reliability for the platform, and acting as the senior technical authority who takes an enterprise customer from kickoff to a fully successful, live implementation.

Lead, mentor, and inspire a high-performing team of Site Reliability Engineers dedicated to Kong's Managed Gateway offerings.

Architect and implement robust, scalable, and fault-tolerant cloud-native systems using technologies like Kubernetes, Golang, and major cloud providers.

Own the end-to-end operational lifecycle, from proactive monitoring and alerting to incident response and blameless post-mortems, ensuring continuous service improvement.

Drive a culture of developer delight by implementing automation, self-service tooling, and streamlined workflows for deploying and managing API gateways.

Define, track, and report on key SLOs and SLIs to ensure optimal performance and reliability of Managed Gateways.

Champion technical debt prevention and advocate for architectural best practices that enhance system resilience and reduce operational toil.

Collaborate cross-functionally with Product, engineering, and Customer Success to influence roadmap decisions and ensure operational readiness for new features.

Partner directly with enterprise customers — working alongside Product leadership, Professional Services, and Customer Success — to drive end-to-end onboarding and implementation of Cloud Gateways, and productize recurring implementation patterns into repeatable playbooks and platform capabilities.

Bring deep, cross-cloud breadth (AWS, GCP, Azure) to handle unique customer topologies and turn complex setups into successful, production-ready deployments.

Serve as the technical owner of the customer relationship through implementation, primarily supporting our North America customer base, and be the escalation point Customer Success leans on for technically complex accounts.

Feed real-world implementation patterns and customer constraints back to Product to further contribute the roadmap.

Extensive experience as a Site Reliability Engineer, focusing on highly available and distributed systems.

Deep expertise with Kubernetes and cloud-native architectures, preferably across multiple public cloud providers (AWS, GCP, Azure).

Strong proficiency in Golang or similar modern programming languages for automation and tool development.

Proven track record in building and maintaining CI/CD pipelines and infrastructure as code (Terraform, Ansible).

In-depth knowledge of monitoring, logging, and alerting systems (e.g., Prometheus, Grafana, ELK stack, Datadog).

Experience with managed services, API gateways, or similar network infrastructure is highly desirable.

You take immense ownership of your systems, treating reliability as a first-class feature.

You operate with a sense of urgency, especially in critical situations, and drive quick, effective resolutions.

You thrive in a collaborative environment, actively sharing knowledge and elevating the entire team.

Kong moves fast, and our team's spread across continents and time zones — plans shift mid-flight, and things don't always line up neatly. You don't need everything settled to do good work. You bring your own calm to the noise, figure things out as you go, and help the people around you do the same.

Experience with Service Mesh technologies (e.g., Istio, Linkerd).

Familiarity with database administration for high-throughput systems (PostgreSQL, Cassandra).

Contributions to open-source SRE tools or projects.

Relevant cloud certifications (e.g., AWS Certified DevOps Engineer, CKA).

Senior Site Reliability Engineer at Kong focusing on Managed Gateways. The role involves architecting scalable cloud-native infrastructure across AWS, GCP, and Azure, and leading enterprise customer implementations. Primary technologies include Kubernetes, Golang, and Terraform.

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