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.
The Mission:At Kong, we are pioneering the Agentic Era of service connectivity by building the infrastructure that powers the modern API world. As a Software Engineer on the Konnect Control Plane team, you will architect the next-generation cloud-hosted control plane that manages global customer configurations seamlessly. Your work will directly empower developers worldwide, ensuring high availability, speed, and seamless connectivity for Kong's flagship service connectivity platform.
What You’ll Do:Architect and scale microservices that power Kong Konnect's cloud-hosted control plane to manage global customer configurations seamlessly.
Design, implement, and maintain highly performant, low-latency APIs and services that deliver exceptional Developer Delight.
Drive solutions for technical problems of moderate complexity, keeping an active focus on preventing technical debt.
Prevent regressions and guarantee product stability by writing robust, automated tests.
Own the reliability and uptime of services in production by participating in an active on-call rotation.
Collaborate closely with Product Management, Solutions Architects, and cross-functional engineering teams to implement impactful business features.
3+ years of experience working in a team environment to develop, deliver, and maintain complex, distributed software solutions.
Solid proficiency in Go (Golang) and designing relational database data models.
Practical experience building, debugging, and maintaining microservices architectures at scale.
Demonstrated experience performing DevOps monitoring, observability, and supporting a large-scale SaaS platform running on Kubernetes and containerized environments.
Working knowledge of L4/L7 proxies such as Nginx, HA-proxy, or Envoy.
Firm grasp of API lifecycle management, design standards, and testing frameworks (TDD/automated testing).
Excellent written and verbal communication skills.
Ownership: You act as a driver, not a passenger, and take complete accountability for the quality of your systems and outcomes.
Urgency: You thrive in a high-growth environment, iterating quickly and pushing for results with passion and grit.
Collaboration: You break down silos, communicate transparently, and model the true spirit of a team player.
Deep experience with Go standards and writing idiomatic, highly optimized Go.
Direct experience with Nginx, OpenResty, LuaJIT, or the Kong gateway core.
Experience with cloud-native observability stacks, specifically Datadog or OpenTelemetry.
Active contributions to open-source software projects.
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About Kong:
Kong Inc., the AI Connectivity Company, is building the connectivity layer of 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. For more information, visit www.konghq.com.
Skills Required
- 10+ years of programming in server-side applications and components
- Experience designing, prototyping, building and debugging applications that are highly scalable, distributed, reliable and resilient
- Solid hands-on low-level technical expertise in Linux systems troubleshooting and profiling
- Experience in distributed systems, Linux networking stack and computer systems programming
- Familiarity with AI LLM concepts and applications development
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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