Are you ready to unlock intelligence?
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.
About the Role:
Kong is building the future of API and AI management. We’re a fast-growing, well-funded company with happy customers and motivated employees.
As a Staff Product Designer at Kong, you’ll collaborate closely with product managers, engineers, and other stakeholders to understand customer needs and craft exceptional solutions for our customers. Because we’re a small team, you have the opportunity to make a significant impact on our end-to-end product experience.
Because Kong builds highly technical products for developers, an ideal candidate has experience designing complex B2B or developer-facing products and is comfortable working with metrics, instrumentation, and experimentation in deeply technical environments.
What you’ll do:Design exceptional experiences: Design experiences that our customers need and love. Lead complex projects from early concepting to final UI design, while upholding our design standards and design system. Apply systems thinking by looking beyond your product area for opportunities to improve overall cohesion and usability.
Champion customers: Take time to understand our customers, their jobs-to-be-done, and infuse this understanding into your work and that of others. Identify and make a compelling case for improving existing areas of our product to better meet the needs of our customers.
Drive alignment: Solicit diverse perspectives, early and often, to strengthen your work. Communicate context, including customer data, business impact, trade-offs, and rationale, to generate alignment and make forward progress.
Demonstrate ownership: Proactively educate people outside of the design team on the best way to work together. Be clear about your priorities and level of urgency. Keep people informed about your progress, risks, and changes to timelines. Take initiative to improve our team and its practices.
Level others up: Role model best practices and mentor junior members of the design team.
What you’ll bring:
At least 6+ years of related experience, ideally in a developer tool SaaS product or similar
A portfolio that demonstrates expertise in all phases of design, including:
Leading a collaborative design process from definition to delivery
Conducting your own user research
Making data-informed design decisions
Positively impacting customers and improving business metrics
Demonstrating strong communication and storytelling skills (written and verbal)
Using and contributing to a shared design system and team processes
Crafting aesthetically-pleasing and pixel-perfect final UI
Comfort designing for developer experiences, including complex workflows, technical concepts, and system constraints
#LI-LR1
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.
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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Fair & Transparent Compensation — Pay is considered competitive for many roles, particularly in senior and technical positions, with bonuses and overtime enhancing earnings for some. Compensation is generally described as strong across a range of functions.
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Leave & Time Off Breadth — Policies such as flexible time off, company Unplug Days, U‑First Fridays, and a paid sabbatical create multiple avenues for rest and personal development. These offerings support work‑life balance for a distributed workforce.
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Equity Value & Accessibility — Stock options and an employee stock purchase plan enable broad participation in company equity. Equity is positioned as a meaningful component of total rewards alongside cash compensation.
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What We Do
Kong Inc., a leading developer of cloud API technologies, is on a mission to enable companies around the world to become “API-first” and securely accelerate AI adoption. Kong helps organizations globally — from startups to Fortune 500 enterprises — unleash developer productivity, build securely and accelerate time to market.
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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