Senior Software Engineer, Control Plane

Kong; Varese; On-site; EUR 120,000 - 180,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity

Bonus

Health insurance

Dental insurance

Vision insurance

Paid holidays

PTO

Professional development

Tools

Job summary

Kong is seeking a Senior Software Engineer for the Control Plane in Varese, Lombardy, Italy. You will design and implement core features for the Kong Gateway Control Plane using Golang, owning the full lifecycle from design to deployment and operations.

You will lead architectural discussions to minimize debt and ensure 99.99% uptime, mentor engineers, and collaborate with product managers to shape cloud-native roadmaps for a globally used API platform.

Qualifications

• Production experience with Golang services.
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• Deep understanding of distributed systems and API design.
• Hands-on Kubernetes experience and cloud-native ecosystem.
• Proficiency with PostgreSQL.
• Familiarity with CI/CD pipelines and infrastructure-as-code practices.
• Strong collaboration and mentoring skills.

Responsibilities

• Design and implement core features for the Kong Gateway Control Plane using Golang.
• Own end-to-end service lifecycle from design to deployment and operations.
• Lead architectural discussions to minimize debt and ensure uptime.
• Influence roadmap for cloud-native components in a distributed system.
• Mentor engineers through code reviews and design sessions.
• Collaborate with product managers and other engineering teams on impactful solutions.
• Resolve complex bugs and performance bottlenecks in networking and configuration management components.

Skills

Golang

Distributed systems

Kubernetes

Cloud-native

PostgreSQL

CI/CD

Infrastructure as code

API design

Mentoring

Architecture discussions

Performance tuning

Tools

Docker

Terraform

Git

Prometheus

Job description

In this role you will design and implement core features for the Kong Gateway Control Plane using Golang, owning the full lifecycle of services from design to deployment. You will drive architectural decisions to maintain high uptime and performance while shaping a cloud-native roadmap. You’ll mentor engineers, collaborate with product teams, and tackle complex bugs to deliver a reliable developer experience at enterprise scale. This is a chance to impact a globally used platform that underpins API and AI traffic management.

• Offers Equity
• Offers Bonus
• Health, dental, and vision insurance
• Paid holidays and PTO
• Professional development opportunities and tools
• Design and implement core features for the Kong Gateway Control Plane using Golang
• Own end-to-end service lifecycle from design to deployment and operations
• Lead architectural discussions to minimize debt and ensure 99.99% uptime
• Influence roadmap for cloud-native components in a distributed system
• Mentor engineers through code reviews and design sessions
• Collaborate with product managers and other engineering teams on impactful solutions
• Resolve complex bugs and performance bottlenecks in networking and configuration management components
• Production experience with Golang services
• Deep understanding of distributed systems and API design
• Hands-on Kubernetes experience and cloud-native ecosystem
• Proficiency with relational databases (PostgreSQL)
• Familiarity with CI/CD pipelines and infrastructure-as-code practices
• Proactive ownership mindset
• Strong collaborative and cross-functional communication
• Bias for action in fast-paced environments
• Golang
• Distributed systems

Senior Software Engineer, Control Plane varese, lombardia, it