Software Engineer 2, Ai Gateway

Kong Inc.; Lombardia; Hybrid; EUR 64,000 - 79,000; Full time

Job summary

Kong Inc. is seeking a Software Engineer for the AI Gateway Team to advance the Kong AI gateway, enabling secure governance of AI and LLM-based innovation worldwide.

You will work on core features like multi-LLM routing, semantic caching, MCP, and more, building scalable, distributed servers with a strong Linux foundation. The role emphasizes ownership, collaboration with a remotely distributed team, and clear documentation.

Qualifications

• 3+ years of programming in server-side applications and components.
• Hands-on experience with either Golang or Rust.
• Experience building and debugging highly scalable, distributed systems.
• Solid Linux systems troubleshooting and profiling skills.
• Knowledge of Linux networking stack and APIs on L7/L4 transports is a must.
• Experience working with distributed teams.
• Strong ownership and documentation skills.
• Familiarity with AI/LLM concepts is a plus.

Responsibilities

• Build and maintain API management software for AI/LLMs and its underlying stack.
• Implement new features including proxying, load balancing, and database support for Kong AI Gateway.
• Troubleshoot bugs, tune performance, and perform low-level optimizations.
• Bridge Kong with third-party deployment platforms and tooling.
• Handle additional tasks as assigned by management.

Skills

Go

Rust

Distributed systems

Linux troubleshooting

Tools

NGINX/OpenResty

Envoy

Kong/LuaJIT

Job description

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 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 Do

• Responsible for building and maintaining API management software for AI and LLMs and its underlying stack.
• 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.
• Any additional tasks required by manager.

What You’ll Bring

• 3+ years of programming in server-side applications and components.
• Hands on experience with either Golang or Rust
• Experience 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

Bonus Points

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

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.

Compensation Range: €63,750 - €78,750