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.

Senior Software Engineering Manager, Managed Gateways SREs

Location:Washington

The Mission:

As a Senior Software Engineering Manager for Managed Gateways SREs, you will lead the charge in defining the reliability, scalability, and operational excellence of Kong's critical managed services. Your team's unwavering commitment to 99.99%+ uptime and seamless performance directly empowers developers globally, fueling the Agentic Era by providing the robust infrastructure that underpins modern API-driven applications. You'll build this team in Toronto from the ground up, and in the early stages, you'll stay hands-on - directly in the work, not just directing it from a distance.

What You'll Do:

• Build Kong's Managed Gateways SRE team in Seattle, Washington from the ground up - hiring, setting the bar, and staying hands-on in enterprise implementations as the team ramps.

• Act as a direct contributor to critical implementations and reliability work in the early stages, with outcomes that materially move the needle on Managed Gateways' growth and business performance.

• Lead, mentor, and grow a high-performing team of Site Reliability Engineers dedicated to Kong's Managed Gateway offerings, in direct support of our critical enterprise customer base across the Americas and Europe.

• 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 developer delight and operational efficiency through automation, self-service tooling, and streamlined workflows for deploying and managing API gateways, while proactively preventing technical debt and reducing operational toil.

• Define, track, and report on key SLOs and SLIs, and advocate for architectural best practices that keep Managed Gateways performant and resilient as it scales.

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

What You'll Bring:

The Toolkit

• Proven experience leading and managing Site Reliability Engineering or DevOps teams in a fast-paced, high-growth environment.

• Deep expertise in designing, deploying, and operating highly available distributed systems on cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, or GCP).

• Extensive hands-on experience with Kubernetes (k8s) and container orchestration in production environments.

• Proficiency in Golang or similar modern programming languages for infrastructure automation and service development.

• Strong understanding of observability principles and experience with tools such as Prometheus, Grafana, OpenTelemetry, or similar.

• Demonstrated ability to manage critical incidents, perform root cause analysis, and implement effective preventative measures.

• Familiarity with API gateway technologies, service mesh, or network proxies is a significant plus.

The Kong DNA

• Ownership: You take full responsibility for the reliability and performance of systems, driving initiatives from conception to completion.

• Urgency: You thrive in dynamic environments, prioritizing critical issues and delivering impactful solutions with speed and precision.

• Collaboration: You build strong relationships, foster open communication, and work effectively across global teams to achieve shared goals.

Bonus Points:

• Experience with open-source contributions or active participation in SRE/cloud-native communities.

• Certifications in cloud platforms (e.g., AWS Certified DevOps Engineer) or Kubernetes (e.g., CKA, CKAD).

• Background in companies focused on developer tools, infrastructure software, or API management.

#LI-KC1

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 .

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:

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.

What You’ll Do:

• 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.

   

What You’ll Bring:

• 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).

#LI-BR2

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 .

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:

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.

What You’ll Do:

• 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.

What You’ll Bring:

• 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.

#LI-TS1

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 .