Senior Software Engineer, AI Gateway - Milan

Kong Inc.; Milano; In loco; EUR 60.000 - 80.000; Tempo pieno

Descrizione del lavoro

A leading cloud API technology firm in Milan seeks a Senior Software Engineer to design and maintain API management software for AI & LLMs. The ideal candidate has over 5 years of experience in server-side programming, solid expertise in Linux systems, and strong communication skills. This full-time position offers an opportunity to work on innovative features and mentor junior team members.

Competenze

• 5+ years of programming in server-side applications.
• Experience designing and debugging highly scalable applications.
• Strong hands-on expertise in Linux systems.

Mansioni

• Design and maintain API management software for AI and LLMs.
• Implement new features including load balancing and database support.
• Troubleshoot bugs and optimize performance.

Conoscenze

Server-side programming

Distributed systems design

Linux systems troubleshooting

APIs knowledge

Rust

Communication skills

Strumenti

NGINX/OpenResty

Envoy

Istio

Descrizione del lavoro

Senior Software Engineer, AI Gateway - Milan

Join to apply for the Senior Software Engineer, AI Gateway - Milan role at Kong Inc.

Are you ready to power the World's connections? 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

You will join the engineering team that builds the Kong AI gateway, empowering companies and developers around the world to govern every step of their AI & LLM based innovation.

As a Senior Software Engineer in the AI Gateway Team, you will be working on core features such as multi‑LLM routing and balancing, semantic caching and routing, MCP, and more.

What You’ll Be Doing

• Responsible for designing, building and maintaining API management software for AI and LLMs and its underlying stack.
• Architecture, design, and implement new innovative features including proxying capabilities, load balancing, databases support that extend Kong AI Gateway’s offering.
• Bugs troubleshooting, performance tuning and low‑level optimizations.
• Fill the gaps between Kong and third‑party deployment platforms and tooling.
• Mentor junior members of the team.
• Any additional tasks required by the manager.

What You’ll Bring

• 5+ 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 – Kong works with APIs on both L7 and L4 transports and protocols, so this expertise and knowledge are required.
• Comfortable working with a remotely distributed team.
• Strong sense of ownership and excellent verbal and written communication skills – engineers at Kong write the documentation for their products.
• Familiarity with AI LLM concepts and applications development.
• Hands on experience with Rust

Bonus Points

• Hands on experience with NGINX/OpenResty/Kong/LuaJIT.
• Hands on experience with Envoy or Istio.

About Kong

Kong Inc., a leading developer of cloud API technologies, is on a mission to enable companies around the world to become “API‑first” and securely accelerate AI adoption. Kong helps organizations globally — from startups to Fortune 500 enterprises — unleash developer productivity, build securely, and accelerate time to market. For more information about Kong, please visit www.konghq.com or follow us on X @thekonginc.

Seniority level

• Mid‑Senior level

Employment type

• Full‑time

Job function

• Engineering and Information Technology
• Software Development

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