Careers at Kong

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 Project Volcano, an internal developer platform purpose-built for Kong's engineering ecosystem. Volcano will provide teams with on-demand preview environments, edge deployments, managed PostgreSQL, auth, realtime, and storage APIs all deeply integrated with Kong products. As the Senior SRE for Volcano, you will be the reliability voice for this platform. This role is a strategic initiative driven by the Office of the CTO (OCTO). You will partner directly with engineering leadership to define the platform's reliability posture. This is a high-visibility, high-impact role with direct influence on Kong's next generation developer platform. What You'll Do: Own reliability for Volcano end-to-end: Define and drive SLOs, error budgets, and incident response practices for all Volcano services — edge deployments, managed Postgres, auth, realtime, storage, and the control plane. Contribute to the platform's infrastructure: Design and build the multi-region Kubernetes infrastructure, networking, and data plane that powers Volcano's edge deployment pipeline and backend-as-a-service capabilities. Build the GitOps and CI/CD backbone: Establish deployment automation, canary pipelines, and preview environment provisioning using ArgoCD, Helm, and Terraform/Terragrunt — setting patterns the broader team will follow. Scale managed data services: Design, operate, and harden multi-tenant PostgreSQL clusters, Redis caching layers, and object storage — with a focus on data isolation, performance, and disaster recovery. Drive observability from day one: Instrument every Volcano service with meaningful SLIs; build dashboards, alerts, and runbooks using Datadog, Prometheus, and Grafana before services go live, not after incidents. Lead cross-functional reliability work: Collaborate with the OCTO team, product engineering, and security to bake reliability and compliance into Volcano's architecture — not bolt it on later. Evaluate and adopt emerging technologies: Given Volcano's greenfield nature, evaluate and make architectural decisions on edge runtimes, serverless compute, vector databases, and AI-native infrastructure components. What You'll Bring: BS in Computer Science or equivalent; substantial experience at Staff or Principal IC level in SRE/Platform Engineering. Proven track record building SRE or platform engineering practices for developer-facing platforms or PaaS/SaaS products — ideally at greenfield stage. Kubernetes expertise: multi-tenant cluster design, networking (CNI, service mesh, ingress), autoscaling, and security hardening. #LI-BR2 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 .

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. 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-AP1 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 .

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. 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. About The Role: 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. What You’ll Do: 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 What You'll Bring: Strong production experience with Golang 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 Bonus points: 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 #LI-BR2 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 .

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: As an SRE 2 for Managed Gateways, you will be pivotal in ensuring the rock-solid reliability, scalability, and performance of Kong's critical managed services. Your expertise will directly impact customer trust and position Kong as a leader in the Agentic Era through unparalleled product stability. What You’ll Do: Implement and maintain robust automation for deploying and operating Kong's Managed Gateways across various cloud environments. Monitor system health, performance, and uptime, striving for 99.99% availability for our core infrastructure. Resolve complex production incidents efficiently, participating actively in on-call rotations to maintain service continuity. Build resilient tools and systems that enhance the overall reliability and operational efficiency of our platform. Contribute proactively to the prevention of technical debt, ensuring sustainable and scalable operations as Kong grows. Collaborate closely with engineering teams to design, review, and implement resilient and highly scalable services. What You’ll Bring: 2+ years of experience applying Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) principles and practices in a production environment. Proficiency in at least one of Golang or Python for automation, tooling, and infrastructure as code. Hands-on experience with Kubernetes and major cloud platforms such as AWS, GCP, or Azure. Familiarity with monitoring, logging, and alerting tools (e.g., Prometheus, Grafana, Datadog). Solid understanding of networking concepts, distributed systems, and API gateways. The Kong DNA: Own the reliability and performance of critical production systems with a strong sense of accountability. Drive urgent resolution of issues, demonstrating a bias for action and minimizing customer impact. Collaborate effectively with cross-functional teams, fostering an environment of shared understanding and collective success. Bonus Points: Experience with Kong Gateway or other API management platforms. Relevant cloud certifications (e.g., AWS Certified DevOps Engineer, Kubernetes Administrator). Active contributions to open-source projects or developer communities. #LI-AP1 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 .