Senior Engineering Manager - Test Function

Kong; Milano; In loco; EUR 130.000 - 180.000; Tempo pieno

Descrizione del lavoro

Kong is seeking a Senior Engineering Manager to lead Quality Engineering across its flagship runtime platforms. You will oversee a distributed SDET team and architect an AI-driven testing strategy, expanding LLMs and autonomous test agents within CI/CD pipelines.

You will define QE health metrics, drive upstream quality ownership, and partner with Product and Software Engineering to build testable architectures for low-latency data planes.

Competenze

• 10+ Years in Software Engineering / SDET
• 4+ Years in Engineering Management
• Hands-on AI Integration Vision with LLMs or autonomous test agents
• Operational Excellence: manage follow-the-sun cadence and cross-timezone execution

Mansioni

• Global Team Leadership & Operations: lead a distributed SDET team across regions
• Architect the AI Testing Strategy and roadmap for AI, LLMs, and autonomous test agents
• Own Runtimes Quality Strategy for low-latency data planes
• Modernize Frameworks & CI/CD Pipelines within GitHub Actions, Docker, and Kubernetes
• Shift-Left Quality & Governance: embed testability in early designs
• Define Enterprise-Grade Metrics: QE health indicators and release stability

Conoscenze

SDET / Software Testing

Software Engineering

Engineering Management

AI Integration

Operational Excellence

Strumenti

GitHub Actions

Docker

Kubernetes

Descrizione del lavoro

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.

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 the Senior Engineering Manager, you will serve as the global leader for Quality Engineering across Kong’s flagship runtime platforms (AI Gateway, API Gateway, Event Gateway and Mesh).

This is a high-visibility, transformative leadership role. Beyond overseeing our distributed global SDET organization, you will be the primary architect of Kong’s next-generation AI-driven testing strategy. You will spearhead the transformation of our quality engineering function from traditional automation to an intelligent, agentic, self-healing test substrate, using LLMs and automated prompt/agent loops to test the very infrastructure powering the AI era.

What You’ll Do

• Global Team Leadership & Operations: Lead, mentor, and grow a high-performing, geographically distributed team of Software Development Engineers in Test (SDETs) across North America, Europe, and Asia.
• Architect the AI Testing Strategy: Define and execute the roadmap for integrating AI, LLMs, and autonomous test agents directly into our testing lifecycle. Implement generative AI capabilities for automated test case generation, smart failure triage, self-healing test scripts, and dynamic edge-case synthesis.
• Own Runtimes Quality Strategy: Establish testing strategies for low-latency, high-throughput C/Lua/Rust data planes.
• Modernize Frameworks & CI/CD Pipelines: Oversee the architectural evolution of our end-to-end, performance, regression, and chaos-testing automation harnesses embedded within modern CI/CD pipelines (GitHub Actions, Docker, K8s).
• Shift-Left Quality & Governance: Drive quality ownership upstream. Partner closely with Software Engineering and Product Management to embed rigorous testability standards into initial architectural designs.
• Define Enterprise-Grade Metrics: Establish and monitor clear QE health indicators (e.g., CI signal reliability, automation coverage, defect density, time-to-triage, and release stability).

What You’ll Bring

• 10+ Years in Software Engineering / SDET: Proven track record building and scaling enterprise software test automation systems.
• 4+ Years in Engineering Management: Direct experience leading distributed or global software engineering/SDET teams.
• Hands-on AI Integration Vision: Proven experience applying LLMs, Generative AI, or autonomous agent frameworks (e.g., Model Context Protocol, agentic tool-calling, synthetic data generation) to software quality or developer workflows.
• Operational Excellence: Demonstrated ability to manage follow-the-sun operational cadence, vendor partnerships, and cross-timezone execution seamlessly.

Bonus Points

• Direct experience testing high-performance networking data planes, proxies, or API Gateways (e.g., Kong, NGINX, Envoy).
• Background in performance, chaos engineering (e.g., Gremlin, Litmus), and load testing high-availability SaaS platforms.
• Active involvement or contributions to open-source quality frameworks or AI development tooling.

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.