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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.
Dedicated Cloud Gateways provide organizations with a fully managed, private, and isolated gateway environment that eliminates the complexity of managing infrastructure while ensuring security and compliance. Designed for high performance and scalability, these gateways allow businesses to control traffic flow across their services without sharing resources with other customers.
Serverless Gateways offer a fully managed, elastic API gateway solution that meets traffic demands without the need for provisioning or managing any underlying infrastructure. Built to simplify operations and reduce costs, these gateways empower organizations to deploy APIs seamlessly in serverless environments, ensuring efficient resource utilization.
This is a unique opportunity to join early in the product evolution of a key Kong growth bet that is already clocking double-digit YoY adoption. You’ll work on distributed systems, multi-cloud networking, and API infrastructure that form the backbone of modern digital businesses.
About the Role:
As a Senior Software Engineer, you’ll not only build critical components of the Managed Gateways platform, but also take ownership of major features end-to-end, lead technical execution within the team, and mentor peers. You’ll collaborate with product managers, architects, and other engineers to shape the technical direction and ensure the platform delivers 99.99% uptime, performance, and developer delight.
What You'll Do:
Design, develop, and operate highly available distributed systems for Managed Gateways, ensuring resilience to regional and zonal outages.
Own and lead delivery of key features/modules, driving them from design through implementation and production rollout.
Build microservices and control-plane components that power Kong’s Dedicated Cloud Gateways and Serverless Gateways.
Partner with Product and Engineering teams to deliver new features at scale that directly impact customers’ ability to build, secure, and manage APIs.
Participate in on-call rotations, owning services in production and driving reliability improvements.
Write automated tests, observability hooks, and tooling to ensure reliability and reduce toil.
Assist in the hiring process and help grow and mentor engineers on the team.
Contribute to shaping the technical roadmap for Managed Gateways, bringing in ideas from infrastructure, networking, and platform engineering.
Work in a high-velocity, pre-IPO environment, balancing innovation with reliability and customer impact.
What You'll Bring:
Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science or related field.
5+ years of experience building high-performance software, ideally in infrastructure or platform engineering.
Strong experience with Golang
Deep understanding of distributed systems, networking (L4/L7, DNS, TLS/SSL, HTTP), and cloud-native architectures.
Hands-on experience with at least one major cloud (AWS, GCP, Azure) and container orchestration (Kubernetes).
Experience building APIs, standardizing APIs in large organizations, and creating API workflows.
Experience designing and operating systems to deliver 99.99%+ uptime SLAs.
Proven ability to debug complex systems from bit-and-bytes level (packets, protocols) to high-level design.
Knowledge of observability and monitoring practices to ensure high availability and performance.
Strong communication and collaboration skills, with the ability to work across teams and geographies.
Strong sense of ownership, with experience driving features end-to-end and influencing technical direction.
Bonus Points:
Experience working with or contributing to L4/L7 proxies such as Nginx, Envoy, or HAProxy.
Background in API management, API workflows, or developer platforms.
Experience with multi-cloud networking.
Contributions to open-source infrastructure or networking projects.
#LI-PC1
About Kong:
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 www.konghq.com.
Skills Required
- Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science or related field
- 5+ years of experience building high-performance software
- Strong experience with Golang
- Deep understanding of distributed systems and cloud-native architectures
- Hands-on experience with at least one major cloud and container orchestration (Kubernetes)
Kong Compensation & Benefits Highlights
The following summarizes recurring compensation and benefits themes identified from responses generated by popular LLMs to common candidate questions about Kong and has not been reviewed or approved by Kong.
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Leave & Time Off Breadth — Flexible PTO, company-wide Unplug Days, and a four‑week paid sabbatical after five years are prominently offered to support rest and work–life balance. These programs are presented as meaningful perks beyond base pay and are highlighted across official materials and third‑party summaries.
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Healthcare Strength — U.S. medical, dental, and vision coverage is described as strong, with plan quality drawing positive sentiment. Solid healthcare appears to contribute meaningfully to overall satisfaction with the total package.
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Equity Value & Accessibility — Stock options are offered to most employees, creating ownership upside alongside cash compensation. Equity is positioned as a visible component that helps keep offers competitive for certain technical and go‑to‑market roles.
Kong Insights
What We Do
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. No AI without APIs.
Why Work With Us
It starts with how we show up for each other. We’ve created a workplace that’s intentionally flexible, deeply inclusive, and built for meaningful collaboration — whether virtual or in person. We trust our teams to own their work, and we give them the support, tools, and freedom to grow.
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