Senior Software Engineer

Kong; Bengaluru; On-site; INR 2,800,000 - 3,600,000; Full time

Job summary

Kong Bengaluru seeks a Senior Software Engineer to build high-performance Go runtimes, CLI engines, and declarative state managers used across Kong's runtimes and tools.

You will architect SDKs, APIs, and code-generation pipelines, while shaping IaC tooling with OpenAPI/AsyncAPI. The role blends backend engineering with APIOps, Terraform providers, and scalable CI/CD automation.

Qualifications

• 5+ years of software engineering experience delivering production-grade backends.
• Proven expertise in Golang and designing developer-friendly APIs (REST/ gRPC/ OpenAPI).
• Hands-on IaC knowledge including Terraform provider development and Kubernetes operators.
• Commitment to clean code, automated testing, benchmarking, and robust architecture.
• Strong communication, mentorship, and cross-team collaboration skills.

Responsibilities

• Develop high-performance Go runtimes, CLI engines, and declarative state managers.
• Architect and maintain Go SDKs and core libraries interfacing with Kong's tools.
• Define REST/gRPC API contracts with backward compatibility and DX focus.
• Build spec-driven tooling to generate SDKs and IaC definitions automatically.
• Lead and mentor engineers across global backend and platform teams.

Skills

Golang

APIOps

Terraform

API Design

CI/CD tooling

Code generation/SDKs

Mentoring/Leadership

Job description

Are you ready to unlock intelligence?

About the Role:

As a Senior Software Engineer, you will develop high-performance Go runtime, CLI engines and declarative state managers. You will architect the software that thousands of engineering teams use every day to interact with Kong's runtime - including deck (Kong's state management & drift detection engine), the Kong Terraform Provider, official Go SDKs and automated spec-driven API tooling.

What You Will Build & Own:

You will balance Software Development with APIOps Architecture:

1. Declarative Engine

• State & Drift Management Engines: Design and optimize algorithms in Go for state diffing, validation, and real-time drift detection across large-scale multi-tenant API topologies.
• Go SDK & Core Libraries: Architect and maintain enterprise-grade, high-performance Go SDKs used by Kong's internal microservices and external clients to interface with the Konnect SaaS platform.
• API Design & Standardization: Define clean, extensible REST API contracts across Kong's platform runtimes.
• Code Generation & Tooling Pipelines: Architect spec-driven tooling (OpenAPI/AsyncAPI) to dynamically generate SDKs, client libraries, and IaC definitions without manual developer toil.

2. APIOps & IaC Ecosystem

• Core CLI Engineering: Build modern, fast, and intuitive CLI-first developer experiences designed for both human developer workflows and high-concurrency CI/CD automation pipelines (GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, Jenkins).
• Terraform & Provider Ecosystem: Build and extend high-reliability Terraform Providers to enable seamless IaC operations.
• Support for Next-Gen Runtimes: Bring new runtime capabilities into the declarative management ecosystem as native API primitives.

What You'll Bring:

• 5+ years of software engineering experience designing and delivering production-grade backend systems and developer tools using Golang.
• API Design Mastery: Proven experience crafting intuitive, developer-friendly API schemas (REST, gRPC, OpenAPI), with a strong focus on backwards compatibility, versioning and developer experience (DX).
• Hands-on IaC / Platform Understanding: Production exposure to Terraform provider development, Kubernetes operators or stateful CI/CD automation pipelines.
• Engineering Rigor: Strong commitment to clean code, comprehensive automated testing (unit, integration, end-to-end), benchmarking and robust software architecture.
• Communication & Technical Leadership: Ability to articulate complex technical decisions, mentor junior engineers and collaborate across global backend and platform teams.

Why Join Kong?

• Build for Engineers: Your work is open-source adjacent and directly impacts millions of developers and Fortune 500 enterprises around the globe.
• Solving Deep Technical Problems: Move beyond standard CRUD services to solve high-impact problems in declarative state sync, API governance and distributed connectivity.
• High-Growth Pre-IPO Startup: Scale your career alongside a market-leading company driving the future of API management and AI connectivity.

#LI-PC1

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.